Surveys from Universities?

[Gandalf1]

Have noticed lately, that a fair amount of surveys I have received invites to from many of the sites I'm a member of, are from Universities?

I'm curious as to why such a place would be using survey sites to do their work or research, or is it just students in many cases using survey sites to gain more points or whatever it is they need for the courses they are doing?  When I start a survey and see it is from a Uni, I just cancel doing it to be honest, as usually the topic matter is about health issues, political issues and such and to be honest, are of no interest to me at all, so I kinda wonder why survey sites allow Universities to post surveys to start with.  I've also found the payment or points for completing surveys from Uni's isn't worth the effort either as most of the ones that I have done are pretty lengthy, badly displayed and very intrusive as to personal financial details in many cases.

.Anyone else notice this from survey sites they are members of?

[schludermann]

I started noticing these EDU surveys across all the panels I participate since the fall of 2017 and started archiving the IRB onboarding statement on the agreement page in the winter of 2017. I looked today and I have 1500+ of these saved pages. Most of these surveys are from Qualtrics, the surveys are often terribly written and written by amateurs with poor grasp of English. It appears qualtrics will field anything a school wants to pay for. In the last year there has been an up tick in international surveys from UK, Germany and Canada. Many are psychology experimenters. Of course since March the COVID-19 surveys seemed to have gone viral:)

[cricket]

Would either of you recommend companies that are giving these surveys? I only see them on Prolific but would love to do more. Thank you.

[Gandalf1]

Have to agree with schludermann, the surveys are very badly written, and as suggested, are "physchology experimenters" which in itself makes me wonder.  I'm starting to wonder more about surveys sites now, and have started cancelling memberships to a few that don't value my opinion or send invites very often, so the list of sites I'm a member of is getting smaller, just like the rewards offered by many of the surveys sites now. 

 

[mnleona]

Some have their own opinions that also do not agree with mine.  I am on Inboxdollars and mypoints mainly so probably some there. 

[somelady]

I have seen these surveys for years and most of the the time it makes me angry because qualtrics keeps most of the money they pay them to conduct these surveys. Some of the surveys tell you in the description how much they are paying but qualtrics reduces that amount . I use to write to the universities and tell them and sometimes they would make qualtrics pay the right amount.

I notice Prolific not only does the same thing but will shave off even more when you get approved for the reward.

[ErgoProxy]

I've had surveys like that but they were through either mypoints or Swagbucks.

[NevadaJones]

Guess I'm the outlier here.  The vast majority of academic surveys I get are through Prolific, and they are consistently well-written and constructed. Often they're even interesting. Not about cable TV, credit cards, cell phone service and all the other usual survey topics that make me want to puke at times. 

The one thing I have noticed is occasionally getting nearly the exact same survey, even almost word for word, from different researchers/universities in a short amount of time. Plagiarism I tell you! 

[peach6]

4 minutes ago, NevadaJones said:

Guess I'm the outlier here.  The vast majority of academic surveys I get are through Prolific, and they are consistently well-written and constructed. Often they're even interesting. Not about cable TV, credit cards, cell phone service and all the other usual survey topics that make me want to puke at times. 

I Agree the ones from Prolific are usually well written

[episemion]

I have seen those University types. I find them to be either badly written or badly programmed. Or they have odd questions like the one  I was getting from Cornell that requested mother's maiden name. 

Two others I tend to avoid are ones that ask questions with no way out ("What kind of wine do you drink" without a "Don't drink wine" option) or those in broken English. 

[ropar]

Many are from grad students doing their thesis or from heads of psychology depts.  These are more psych studies than surveys. They slow down in July and pick up again in Sept. Despite some awkwardness in the questions, they're perfectly legit. If there's a "no-way-out" question, I stop the survey and email the sender.  You're right about their being frustrating.

The one asking for your mother's maiden name either wants to match you to a previous survey, or will have a follow-up survey at a future time, and just wants to identify you.

Some surveys are identical because they use standard survey templates.  I do them on both Prolific and Amazon Mechanical Turk, and I've done some hundreds of times, which makes them fast and easy.

 

[episemion]

You are correct on the mother's maiden name question. That was what the university dept. said. They were not aware that that is a common account security question / answer. They removed it.

 

[mnleona]

Today I got "what date is August" and when I put 8, I was DQed.  Not sure what they meant. 

[episemion]

Had one today that asked "What city" and then listed all 50 states. Anyone ever hear of proofreading?