> *phoebe ayers* phoebe.wiki at
gmail.com writes:
>
> ++++++
> I'm not sure there's any way to get a non-self-selected survey about
> anything on the projects due to anonymity concerns.
> ++++++
>
> I'm a 17-year veteran of implementing professional quantitative
> survey research. Self-selection bias is a very complicated study,
> but there are some fairly accessible and intuitive techniques one
> may implement to create a thoughtful survey of a target population
> which minimizes self-selection bias concerns. This allows the
> stakeholders to focus on the challenge of deriving meaning from the
> response data rather than feeling nausea over the sampling
> methodology.
>
> I am willing to give, pro bono, 45 minutes of telephone consulting
> time to any Wikimedia Foundation staff member who is attached to
> this particular survey project, on the condition that they will be
> open and attentive to the possibility that a properly-designed and
> fairly-executed survey may not return results that foster their
> preconceived desires
Except of course, that such a survey would arguably not have "preconceived
desires". So much for empiricism!