Help with research

[elena]

Apologies for this off-topic post.

I'm a Java/C++ developer who is also studying psychology.

I would really appreciate it if you would complete a survey that I'm
using for a research project on programmers.

It's easy [Yes/No answers] and takes about 5 minutes.

I will be presenting the results at the American Psychological
Association convention in August.

The study link is:

http://www.elena.com

The survey measures "cognitive style" (analytical/intuitive) which
describes how you process information and learn. The people I've
pre-tested it with found it to be pretty interesting.

I can go to my friends, however it occurred to me that it might be
better to post in a newsgroup and get a larger, more diverse, and
random sample.

Thanks again for your time,

Elena

[Jeremy Bowers]

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 15:51:47 -0800, elena wrote:

I can go to my friends, however it occurred to me that it might be
better to post in a newsgroup and get a larger, more diverse, and
random sample.

Larger, yes, more diverse, yes, more random, probably not in the
statistical/scientific sense. Caveat emptor.

[Jack Diederich]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2005 at 07:09:44PM -0500, Jeremy Bowers wrote:

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 15:51:47 -0800, elena wrote:

I can go to my friends, however it occurred to me that it might be
better to post in a newsgroup and get a larger, more diverse, and
random sample.

Larger, yes, more diverse, yes, more random, probably not in the
statistical/scientific sense. Caveat emptor.

Bigtime, I see you have a occupation box for "Software Developer" and
"Other." The data for software people (and lawyers) may be noisy becuase
they take the questions literally. Because the answers are True/False
folks might parse them narrowly for their truth value (and all in an
effort to help!). for instance,

"I find that it is possible to be too organized when performing certain
kinds of tasks."

False, I don't find this is possible because I'm not organized.

This reminds me of a story, for Psychology 101 all freshman had to
participate in three experiments by grad students. One I did involved
riding on an excercise bike for ten minutes wearing a heart monitor.
After that you could leave as soon as you felt your heartrate was back
to normal. The study concluded that people are bad at knowing when
their heart rate is elevated. I concluded that undergrads will only
do the minimum to pass a course, and are willing to lie about their
heartrate if it gets them out the door five minutes sooner.

Be careful with data!

-Jack

[elena]

Thanks for input. You're right. Programmers would probably look for the
abolute value of an answer. That's one reason why people sometimes get
annoyed with us (I guess I'm thinking of the product managers I've
worked with). In any case, this is an existing instrument and was not
developed specifically for programmers. I will be very careful. But I
will be using it to compare groups of progammers, so the results should
have some value.

I know I promised not to discuss, but I couldn't resist. I like
discussing our culture.

Elena