Citizen Science Survey about dragonfly/damselfly observing - Please Contribute!

It depends on what the question is, how well formulated it is, and what the audience is. Including it does not result in “learning nothing about their preferences” as ‘no preference’ is itself a preference, and would be, in this case, the null hypothesis. The way OP has structured the questionnaire they will both get falsely biased results and be unable to refute the null hypothesis.

They jumped immediately to, “What are people’s preferences between A & B?” without first (or concurrently) asking, “Do people have a preference between A & B?”

The null hypothesis is a vital part of any research question, and this is often ignored in surveys, resulting in surveys that don’t actually provide any useful data due to not recognizing fundamental assumptions.

5 Likes

Exactly!!!

For those people struggling to comprehend; can kinda think of it like including a placebo in clinical trials. Its important to account for what “nothing” is. Without including it, your data is skewed automatically. And if the placebo is no different from the tested medication; that in and of itself tells a lot! A “no” answer in science is still valid and full of information.

As this is a PhD student, they need to learn how to write a correct survey. Usually that in and of itself is a course at universities, and then you still often run it by boards experienced in survey creation before throwing it to the wild; so Im a bit … concerned? that this survey as it is made it into the wild. For PhD level research id expect more. Its not easy! Not trying to be flippant. Its just al part of the learning process. :)

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.