Do you want to take a quick survey about the effectiveness of tornado forecasts and tornado warnings? Sure you do! It's quick and painless, and at the end of the survey you can opt to answer a few questions about politics if you'd like. You can skip all the fluff if you want -- scroll to the bottom and click the big orange link to take the survey.
This is a redo of a poll I conducted here on DailyKos last year. Remember that? Some of you probably do. You probably also remember how pissed off I was that I couldn't share the results. Here's the story on that, if you missed it...
Early last year, I had to conduct a survey research study for a research methods class I took. The assignment was a relatively simple project -- gather up 20 questions, put them in survey format, hand the questionnaire out to 50 people, compile the results in the statistical program, and crank out a 4 page paper on the results.
Simple enough.
I came up with 20 questions about severe weather and decided to type the survey up on Google Docs and post it here on DailyKos. I figured that I would surely get 50 responses. I mean, half a million people read this website every day, right? So I posted it, and got 50 responses. In two minutes.
100 responses. 250. 500. 750. I had almost 1,000 responses within two days of posting the survey. I wound up with an official total of 1,258 responses from the awesome readers of this website. The professor was more shocked than I was. I plugged all the data points into SPSS (the statistical software we had to use) and came up with some extremely interesting results. They were "very significant," as it turns out.
I wanted to post them on DailyKos to share with all of you. I was legally forbidden to post them on Dailykos to share with all of you.
Another professor at my university caught wind of the enormous response I got, and as he was a member of the school's Institutional Review Board, he decided to flex his muscles. Even though this survey was a small research project that got a few more responses than was required, he single-handedly decided that I conducted a survey in the University's name without the permission of the University, and if I posted even one number of the results, I would face serious disciplinary measures.
Nothing came of it, though, because it was one man overreacting and nobody else had a problem with it.
Whew.
I vowed to revisit the research project another day, and I got that chance this past semester. I took a polling class and we had to come up with an extensive polling project for the course. I revisited the tornado survey and expanded on it. The professor explicitly told us that we did not have to conduct the survey for the course, and if we wanted to conduct it out in the "real world" on our own, we were free to do that.
So that's what I plan on doing this week. The questionnaire will stay open until Friday, January 11. After this diary I'll post several nag diaries. Let's see if we're able to beat 1,258 responses. If you have any questions or concerns, let me know so I can fix whatever is wrong. I'll post the responses the weekend of January 12-13.
Thanks!
Click this link to go to the survey
DISCLAIMER: This survey is conducted for my own personal curiosity and to see how effective tornado warnings and tornado forecasts are. No purchase necessary. See my mom for details. This survey is not conducted or authorized by, or under the supervision of any university, organization, secret government agency, or intergalactic council, including the powers that be who run DailyKos. They don't even know this survey is taking place. They'll likely never know because they don't read the stuff we post anyway. The survey is conducted through Google Docs and is subject to Google's terms of service. Weatherdude is not responsible for any National Security Agency bugs that may or may not be attached to your person during the course of this survey. Your responses are anonymous and cannot be tracked back to you, however if you would like to make a marriage proposal or send me hate messages, please feel free to elaborate in the comment thread below.