<p>At CC, we get tons of requests to survey our members from research groups, grad students, authors, reporters, etc. and our usual answer is "no, thanks." We don't want to inundate our members with such requests. So this is a rare exception - we have vetted this survey and are confident that it is legitimate. Here's the info:</p>
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[quote]
Eduventures, Inc., an education research company based in Boston, is seeking to better understand the needs of students applying to colleges and universities. Universities will use the information you provide in order to improve the information they supply to students during the college search. The survey at the URL below is designed explore this topic and should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.</p>
<p>All respondents who complete the survey by 5 p.m. (EST) on Friday, June 19th, may elect to be entered into a drawing for one of five $100 American Express gift cards. You will be asked to provide your e-mail address AT THE END OF THE SURVEY if you wish to be entered in the drawing. The winners of the prizes will be contacted by email at the completion of the survey project.</p>
<p>Please be assured that your identity and any information that you provide will be kept confidential. Survey results will only be shared in the aggregate, and your information will never be bought, sold, rented, or used to sell you products or services. The survey results will be reported in aggregate form to help universities ensure they maintain a high quality of student services.</p>
<p>Thank you for your thoughtful responses, and for taking the time to complete this survey.
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<p>If you take the survey, please don't post about the questions, etc., in order to not bias subsequent participants.</p>
<p>I filled out the entire thing. After having done projects in school in which I had to make and send out surveys, I know how much work goes into these things and how important they are and I suggest that everyone fill them out. Every single person who fill it out is important because the larger the sample size the more valid the results will be.</p>
<p>Vetted, indeed.
There’s a major typo on one of the pages:</p>
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<p>Phase 3 is <em>supposed</em> to say “Choosing where to attend” (it is defined as such at the top of the page… where most people will probably not look). I don’t how they can expect to get reliable data with this typo.</p>
<p>If this is a for-profit firm, I’m sure CC new parent company (Hobson’s) is being reimbursed. Although it’s not as if CC is making you take it. I took it, but I just like to take surveys, hahaha. :)</p>
<p>It never asked if I applied ED anywhere, or if I applied for financial aid… without specifying those two things, I feel like a lot of the questions will have results that are skewed and difficult to interpret. (For instance, all the fin. aid stuff was “not important at all” and I applied to two schools, didn’t use tools when deciding where to attend after applying, etc.) And I also caught the typo that buffalowizard pointed out. And some of the questions seem like grey areas… for instance, rate the credibility of Youtube. Just random videos from whoever? Or videos that the school itself put onto its Youtube account? Etc. I haven’t finished it yet but I’m already not a fan of a lot of the questions and am pretty unimpressed. I guess it’s honorable/interesting what they are trying to accomplish with this survey, though.</p>
<p>At the beginning it accommodated people who hadn’t applied yet, but then it wouldn’t let you go any further unless you filled out the section on how you made your decision after being accepted. I closed it right there.</p>
<p>Was curious to see what the questions looked like, but if you don’t indicate on the first page that you are currently applying the survey ends so you never get to see the questions. Sites like CC cost money to run (software to write/maintain, storage charges, servers, etc.) so if they choose to help pay those costs with voluntary surveys and/or advertising that is fine with me. No one HAS to take the survey. However, any survey that asks for your email address (they say to inform you if you win that prize) should raise a red flag, since now your email will probably be filled with all kinds of other advertising and/or solicitations.</p>