Re: Meeting Venue Preference Survey

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 10:17:20AM -0700, Dave CROCKER wrote:

> We really need to get these surveys produced by someone with training in 
> survey design.

Or stop using the surveys.  It isn't clear to me that the surveys are
a good idea at all, not just because of sampling biases and survey
design issues, but because they may lead to apparent statements of
preference that don't conform to the general principles that ought to
undergird IAOC decisions.

Surveys are a good way to make a decision look democratic, but there
are well-known and serious problems with collective preference
expression.  (If you don't believe this, you might start by looking up
Kenneth Arrow, whose exploration of this issue is the most famous.
There's a large body of work around this general topic, however.)

If we have general principles for venue selection (for instance), then
asking people to complete a survey is not the right thing to do:
either a given site can be shown to conform to the venue selection
principles, or it can't.  If it does conform, then a survey might
actually reveal a collective "preference" to go elsewhere, but that
would not be a rational preference.  (I wonder in fact whether the
decision to go to Québec will turn out this way.)

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]
Shinkuro, Inc.