From:   IN%"wvenable@attunga.stats.adelaide.edu.au"
20-JAN-1995 08:59:13.14 

Subj:   RE: Internet-Based Survey Research 
If you mean "surveys" of the kind where someone puts 
an article in  several newsgroups asking people to 
fill out an electronic questionnaire and return it, 
the answer has always seemed to me to be simple: Such 
surveys are ALWAYS a waste of time and resources since 
they can only yield non-random, indeed self-selected 
samples from an ill-defined population.  The procedure 
is on exactly the same footing as TV telephone polls, 
newspaper advertisement  polls and the like.  The 
procedure does not to stand up to the most basic 
scientific criteria of validity and thus the exercise 
is futile for any formal academic purpose (except, 
perhaps, journalism).  They should be outlawed and 
attract very serious penalties on the grounds that 
they are a very blatant abuse of the internet.  

No offence intended... 

Bill Venables, Department of Statistics,

The University of Adelaide, 
South AUSTRALIA. 5005.