Huh - COVID-19 Survey From Carnegie Mellon University

[csziggy]

Just went onto Facebook (please don't tell me to avoid it, I know all the arguments) and was asked to participate in this survey. Questions about any symptoms I might be experiencing, exposure to others, activity outside of the house, and of course, age, sex, and location. Interesting.

[msongs]

1. did they want ss number, bank accounts and passwords? they will also sell all your data nt

[csziggy]

3. No personal info other than that I named

Typical information requested for surveys.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. CMU Is Conducting This???

I expected more of them than attempting to mine data from a FB survey.
Geez, 50 people lie about a 105 degree fever & the whole dataset goes boom.

[csziggy]

5. I was surprised - but I love doing surveys

My husband and I are generally in the "other" category since we do not fit neatly into boxes. So we both tend to skew survey results.

Way, way, way back I took a survey about internet usage - they were trying to determine what kind of people used the internet. When the results were published, I happened to catch the article. According to that survey, internet usage by women in my age group had increased by a significant percent. I was so proud that I had skewed the results that much.

[ProfessorGAC]

7. I Could Have Done That Survey...

...without a survey.
The answer is nearly everyone!
The demographics match the population in the Statistical Abstract of the US.
Fun that you messed with them a bit!

[csziggy]

8. The internet survey was way back

About when the world wide web was just getting started. I've been doing stuff online since 1982 with a modem that I put the phone into that did a whopping 300 baud. I think the survey was about 1993 - we were up to 14k by then.

There really were not that many women surfing the internet at that point, so having one that spent a lot of time on it was unusual. The other unusual part was the time I spent - I was recovering from a serious shoulder injury and only had the use of one arm, so doing stuff online was one of the less physically stressful things I could do.

[ProfessorGAC]

10. Ah! Gotcha!

I was thinking you meant recently.
I had VERY little online experience prior to the true explosion of the internet.
Nothing more than dumb terminal access to a mini or mainframe at a blazing 300 baud.

[csziggy]

11. Yeah, we signed in through the State Library access

Mostly intended for research, which both my husband and I were doing on various subjects. He once ended up in the online catalogue for the University of Macau - totally by accident.

Later, we joined The Source to access bulletin boards. Then The Source was acquired by CompuServe where I spent most of my time on their forums using Tapcis, a program that could download message headers, allow you to mark the messages you wanted to download to read and reply to, then upload responses. The CS in my user name stands for CompuServe, which led me here.

[redstatebluegirl]

4. I hope it had an IRB approval on it somewhere.

If not, I would suspect it was not legit.

[csziggy]

6. Shoot - now I can't go back to check it

I should ask my husband to check it!

[bamagal62]

9. CMU is just trying to gather data.

It’s what they do. And, they are very good at it. My kids go there. I took the survey a month ago through a CMU parents group. Maybe they thought they could reach more people through Facebook? I think the more data we have, the better. I’m somewhat confused. Do you think it’s a bad thing, the survey?

[csziggy]

12. I just thought it was interesting - it's the first survey I have done with Facebook

I don't get anywhere near as many calls for surveys these days and I do love skewing them.