Cohousing-L Mailing List: @Robert, Survey of Values

[John Vodonick (jvodonick]

Robert:

I understand your concern in answering the demographic portion of the
survey. I want to assure you that all of the responses have been randomized.
I do not have any ability to determine who answered what question, or in
what way. The answers themselves are pooled and only the data is reported.
All that being the case, the reason that demographic information is
important to this study is to determine the background, and social horizon
of the population responding to the survey. For the most part surveys are
not useful without knowing what the composition of the population of the
survey is. For example, to ask for attitudes on conservative politics from a
population of supporters of the Tea Party movement would be a completely
different survey than asking the same questions from a population of Green
Party members. Without demographic information the differences would not be
apparent. This is obviously a gross example, but I think that you get my
point. I do thank you for taking the time to respond to the survey, indeed
the numbers of responses that decided to take the survey and then skipped
various questions is itself data that is useful. Thanks again.



John Vodonick