Re: Questionnaire

[Piet Beertema <]

    we  are  epidemiologists   of  the  Italian  National  Research  Council
    interested in exploring the potentiality of INTERNET for performing some
    epidemiological investigations at international level. As far as we know
    it is the first attemp of this type in epidemiological research.
    If you are interested in joining,  you are kindly requested  to fill  in
    the following questionnaire for one day  (at your choice) in the week 27
    March - 1 April 1995 and send it back to (EPID@localhost).
    We  will pleased to answer any  questions  concerning the results of the
    investigation (a gopher named  "EPID.CNUCE.CNR.IT"  will be available at
    the IP port =7000).

Before people reply to this, they should think about this:

- Normally answers to this sort of investigations are given
  anonymously. With answers via e-mail this is impossible,
  since e-mail addresses can always be tracked back to a
  person. How are you going to deal with that?

- What is the purpose of the investigation? You say that it
  is for "exploring the potentiality of INTERNET" for this
  sort of investigations, but the questions posed indicate
  quite a different purpose:
  - investigation on the use of PC's and VDT's;
  - investigation on medical issues; these *seem* related
    to the use of PC's and VDT's, but an item like "Number
    of occasions in your lifetime" (for seeing a physician
    or taking medicines for ...) contradicts this.

- Who is going to handle the raw data? Is there any guarantee
  that they won't fall into the wrong hands (given that they
  can't be anonymous)?


Oh, and most of Europe measures in centimeters, not inches...


	Piet Beertema
	Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science
	Amsterdam, The Netherlands