14 Dec 2009

Data collection woes and unsolicited mails

Like a lot of other people out there, I hate receiving unsolicited emails. unfortunately, this time I am the one that has to send them. This was due to the fact that I still have not reached my targeted number of respondents even after an extension on the deadline (Now's it's the 31st of December 2009. I guess, sometimes in life, you have to do things you hate to achieve your goals or targets.

So for the past week I have been sending out emails to bloggers and blog readers all over the UK via email addresses gleaned form their blogs and elsewhere while cringing every time I press the send button. It was quite risky as well considering that some bloggers can be quite nasty to people and stuff they don't like. I am quite surprised that I have so far received only one email asking me to remove them from the mailing list.

However, I have no choice as my entire PhD research is at stake and I am just hoping that these people would look kindly at this poor PhD student and the fact that this is purely an academic research. Hopefully the holiday spirit will help as well.

Of course there is the fact that a 50p donation will be made to Cancer Research UK for every completed questionnaire plus there's a prize draw for all participants who provide their contact details - an opportunity for you to suggest a donation of £100.00 to a charity of your choice or take the cash prize for yourself (your choice) and 10 other respondents will win Amazon vouchers worth £10 each.

Please feel free to distribute this information to anyone you think may be interested - an email or a mention in your blog would be really appreciated. You can access my online survey here: http://www.surveymk.com//blogs

Thanks and Merry Christmas

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your questionnaire talked about how often people visit blogs etc, but seemed to assume this would only be done via the browser directly on the blog's website.

I rarely do this - almost all my blog reading is done via a RSS reader.

Dilip Mutum said...

Thanks for your comment. That's an interesting angle that I didn't think about. However, my study looks at credibility and interactivity as well and as such does require respondents who visit the blogs via a browser. Thanks again.