40 minutes? SERIOUSLY?!?

So tonight, someone taking a survey called again... I had deferred them once before. And though my parents always refuse to take surveys, I thought, "hey, what could it hurt? I remember trying to get participants for surveys, people run from you like its a plague... and its about TV and radio stations... it might be fun."

Well, unfortunately, it got old really fast. She needed stations names and hours listened and miles driven and websites visited and TV watched and .... it was endless.... seriously.... ENDLESS!

Every once in a while I laughed... just because it was so rediculous. And I kept wanting to ask how many people hang up on her in the middle because the survey is SOO long... but I never got the chance. And when it was over and I realized that it had been 40 minutes long, I couldn't believe it.

I've written surveys... I've played the "experimenter-bit" (granted, on a novice level, but still)... and I understand the need to be thorough... lots of detailed questions... but there is also a place to be realistic. How many people will sit through the whole survey? How many people will accurately remember what news websites they have and have not visited in the last month of their life? Who can accurately predict what large household items they will or will not purchase in the next 2 years?

And simply by making this survey so long, it is likely that there is a type of person who will be the only one's willing to finish the survey... and all at once your data is flawed because your sample is not random (of course, that's very difficult to achieve with any experiment... volutary participation and all, but in this case we were VERY far from it)... then what was the point in the first place?

Okay, I'm done ranting... time to go to sleep because I now have another job (yay, money!), and I have to get up early to go to work in the morning (ewww, work!).