Posted ByStu Vessant on April 06, 2002 at 20:59:36:
I found this message elsewhere, and thought it would be of interest to the Bull Board. As far as I can tell, it's on the up-and-up.
Dear Friends:
We are faculty members in the Jones school of management at Rice University
in Houston, Texas (you may verify this by doing a Google search under Lisa
Klein or Paul Dholakia). We are conducting an academic research project
studying different types of social interactions on the internet, and its
influence on participants from a sociological perspective.
In this regard, we are conducting a survey of members belonging to e-mail
groups, newsgroups, chat-rooms, MUDs, and other social groups on the
internet, seeking information on different elements of their thoughts,
feelings, and motivations for participating in the group, as well as
questions about the group's value to them... The survey is available for
answering on the web at the following URL:
http://www.surveypro.com/cgi-bin/surveypro/run_survey.cgi?id=2458
Of course, this research is strictly academic, and has no commercial motives
or interests whatsoever. We hope to publish this research in a sociology or
communications journal.
As a small token of our appreciation for participants' time, and in the
spirit of the philosophy underlying the internet, we will donate $250 each
(a total of $500) to two organizations/ groups/ charities of our
participants' choice (we ask participants to nominate their favorite groups
in the survey). We will randomly select two groups or organizations from the
nominations of all completed responses.
Please, please help us in this research, first through participating, and
second, through encouraging other members of your group to participate in
the research. This will not take more than ten or fifteen minutes of your
(and their time).
In addition, if you know other individuals or groups who might be interested
in participating in this research, please let us know.
We welcome all help, and look forward to your participation. If you have any
questions, please e-mail us (Lisa at lklein@rice.edu) or (Paul at
dholakia@rice.edu). Thank you very much for supporting our research.
Best wishes,
Lisa Klein, Assistant Professor, Rice University Web-page:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lklein
Paul Dholakia, Assistant Professor, Rice University Web-page:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~dholakia