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[Michael Czeiszperger <michael AT czeiszperger.org>]

On Sep 24, 2008, at 12:11 PM, Calvin Powers wrote:

Howdy all, 

I am on the board of advisers for a research center at North Carolina State called The Privacy Place and they are conducting an online survey regarding people's attitudes and habits with regard to privacy. They really need a large number of respondents so If you could take a few minutes to take this survey, I'd really appreciate it. (And please forward this note to your friends and family)

I started to fill out the survey, but the questions are unclear.  I believe they're using meaning #27 of "mind":

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mind

"to regard as concerning oneself or as mattering"

Most of the questions are of this sort:

*I mind when a Web site uses my Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to customize my browsing experience.

I believe the survey is trying to ascertain if people feel positively or negatively, but the questions as I read them only ask if it matters, which is a different question, and could connote either positive or negative feelings.  My understanding is that a good survey will ask similar questions different ways in order to get rid of bias; that these questions are all worded exactly the same makes me suspicious the group was trying to slant the results in their favor.

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Michael Czeiszperger

Chapel Hill, NC 

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." ~G.K. Chesterton 

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