[Promotion] Research proposal

[John Williams]

On Thu, 2006-02-16 at 12:56 +0100, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> On Thursday 16 February 2006 12:29, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
> > >Since there are some people on this list with some experience of this kind
> > > of work, and others with lots of energy, it would be good to first have a
> > > really focused and productive discussion on the merits of the approach
> > > and how we might go about doing this kind of research.
This has been discussed quite a bit in the GNOME-o-sphere, see:

http://live.gnome.org/CountingUsers

http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam_2fSurveyUsers

http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam_2fSurveyDevelopers

and related links.  The upshot of all the discussion is that the task is
fairly easy for someone who knows what they are doing (e.g. me), except
for one thing: an adequate sampling frame.

When I say that I know what I am doing, that is because I teach (and
conduct) market research for a living.  See:

http://live.gnome.org/JohnWilliams


> We also need to think how this research can be conducted, data collection, 
> statistical analysis, that sort of stuff. It's quite an undertaking though.
Data collection is the problem, as outlined above.  Statistical analysis
is easy for someone who knows what they are doing (e.g. me, see ).

Could we focus our efforts on the sampling frame and data collection
problems please?  Broadly stated, they boil down to this:

What is a method that we can use to contact current and potential users
of GNOME and KDE in order to ask them some questions?

If we had some money, this would be easy.  We would simply hire someone
to send out lots of self-completion questionnaires or conduct telephone
interviews.  

But we have no money.  This means, in most people's minds, that we
should use some kind of WWW based poll.  The problem with this is that
your sample is usually very biased (unless you can advertise your poll
all over the net, which needs, you guessed it, lots of money).  We need
to find a more creative solution than that.

Thoughts?