Am I becoming a survey monkey?
Sep. 10th, 2020 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterIn an entry a little over five years ago - July 11, 2015 to be exact - I complained about having evaluation fatigue. It seemed that for the simplest little purchase or other transaction I made, I'd get a receipt that urged me to "tell us how we did today"! Fast forward to 2020 and it seems I'm actually starting to miss that sort of thing!
At the moment, I'm enrolled in at several ongoing surveys about how well or badly I'm coping with life during the pandemic. In each case, I get a link to a survey every couple of months, each of which takes around 15 or 20 minutes to complete, depending on how long I take with the free-form parts like "please elaborate" or "Is there any thing else you would like to tell us about this topic?"
There's one from McMaster University's Optimal Aging Research Portal, another from the City of Ottawa and another from the Council on Aging. And just recently, I registered for a worldwide survey of rheumatology patients:
https://rheum-covid.org/patient-survey/
But not all the surveys I do are for the old or decrepit! I also quite often get surveys from the various organizations I'm a member of, particularly the various museums and art galleries, asking me things like how comfortable I would feel about visiting various types of exhibits as these institutions re-open. And yes, I still get the ones from the grocery store and the drug store that say "Congratulations on redeeming 20,000 PC Optimum points. Please complete this survey!" And quite often, there's a short version which when you've answered that, then asks "Are you willing to answer some more questions?" And most times, I am.
I guess I'm missing some of the fairly trivial interactions that were once part of my day-to-day life. Then too, in some of the surveys I've just mentioned, I genuinely think that my answers will make a difference to how events unfold, especially if a lot of other respondents say similar things. Though I now usually ignore the e-mail messages from Air Miles which claim that "We have a new survey for you to complete! They promise 5 or 10 Air Miles but then after you've already answered a bunch of questions, they say "You do not meet the criteria for this survey. Answer the following questions to find a new survey." An exercise in futility, in other words.
At the moment, I'm enrolled in at several ongoing surveys about how well or badly I'm coping with life during the pandemic. In each case, I get a link to a survey every couple of months, each of which takes around 15 or 20 minutes to complete, depending on how long I take with the free-form parts like "please elaborate" or "Is there any thing else you would like to tell us about this topic?"
There's one from McMaster University's Optimal Aging Research Portal, another from the City of Ottawa and another from the Council on Aging. And just recently, I registered for a worldwide survey of rheumatology patients:
https://rheum-covid.org/patient-survey/
But not all the surveys I do are for the old or decrepit! I also quite often get surveys from the various organizations I'm a member of, particularly the various museums and art galleries, asking me things like how comfortable I would feel about visiting various types of exhibits as these institutions re-open. And yes, I still get the ones from the grocery store and the drug store that say "Congratulations on redeeming 20,000 PC Optimum points. Please complete this survey!" And quite often, there's a short version which when you've answered that, then asks "Are you willing to answer some more questions?" And most times, I am.
I guess I'm missing some of the fairly trivial interactions that were once part of my day-to-day life. Then too, in some of the surveys I've just mentioned, I genuinely think that my answers will make a difference to how events unfold, especially if a lot of other respondents say similar things. Though I now usually ignore the e-mail messages from Air Miles which claim that "We have a new survey for you to complete! They promise 5 or 10 Air Miles but then after you've already answered a bunch of questions, they say "You do not meet the criteria for this survey. Answer the following questions to find a new survey." An exercise in futility, in other words.
