[nero]

Don't give your opinion away for free! You're devaluing mine.

I've decided my opinion must be quite valuable since people keep on calling me up out of the blue and asking me questions. I used to happily answer them since I figured this was a way to get my opinion heard. That was until one last pollster called me up and started asking questions that started with "On a scale of one to five where five is strongly agree and one is strongly disagree how do you rate the following statements?". My answer for each of the following statements was mostly neutral since my political position on most issues can not be reduced to a single number. If I was to seriously parses the statements I might have been able to formulate an answer but after a dozen of these questions you start to question the validity of the whole process and ask yourself: "Is anyone else putting as much thought into their answers as I am?" After what seemed like forever they asked me some personal questions that I didn't exactly feel comfortable answering. I didn't want to tell this anonymous voice on the other end of the phone my age and salary. In the end I fudged my answers to these personal questions to obscure my identity.

I was fed up. I decided afterwards that before submitting to that sort of interrogation again I was going to ask up front "What's in it for me?" Now I've been called up a couple of times since then and found that this question startled the pollster. They had never thought about why anyone would want to give their opinion (and time) away for free. Both times they put me down as a "no response", but I hadn't refused! I had simply asked for some compensation. Isn't that fair? The polling company makes money off of selling other people's opinions, why shouldn't we be compensated as well.

I promise, Mr. pollster, pay me a small stipend and I will seriously attempt to give truthful answers to the silliest of your questions, I'll even give some personal data. But until you do starting paying for opinions, you better recognize that your sampling method is biased towards those who do not put much value in their own opinion.

[OilIsMastery]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nero', 'D')on't give your opinion away for free! You're devaluing mine.

I've decided my opinion must be quite valuable since people keep on calling me up out of the blue and asking me questions. I used to happily answer them since I figured this was a way to get my opinion heard. That was until one last pollster called me up and started asking questions that started with "On a scale of one to five where five is strongly agree and one is strongly disagree how do you rate the following statements?". My answer for each of the following statements was mostly neutral since my political position on most issues can not be reduced to a single number. If I was to seriously parses the statements I might have been able to formulate an answer but after a dozen of these questions you start to question the validity of the whole process and ask yourself: "Is anyone else putting as much thought into their answers as I am?" After what seemed like forever they asked me some personal questions that I didn't exactly feel comfortable answering. I didn't want to tell this anonymous voice on the other end of the phone my age and salary. In the end I fudged my answers to these personal questions to obscure my identity.

I was fed up. I decided afterwards that before submitting to that sort of interrogation again I was going to ask up front "What's in it for me?" Now I've been called up a couple of times since then and found that this question startled the pollster. They had never thought about why anyone would want to give their opinion (and time) away for free. Both times they put me down as a "no response", but I hadn't refused! I had simply asked for some compensation. Isn't that fair? The polling company makes money off of selling other people's opinions, why shouldn't we be compensated as well.

I promise, Mr. pollster, pay me a small stipend and I will seriously attempt to give truthful answers to the silliest of your questions, I'll even give some personal data. But until you do starting paying for opinions, you better recognize that your sampling method is biased towards those who do not put much value in their own opinion.

[Pretorian]

oim, mind me asking, how many forums do you post at?

[emersonbiggins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'o')im, mind me asking, how many forums do you post at?