When an unsolicited survey from an academic lands in your inbox, and says something like this, you know it's not going to be true, but you do hope that it will be a reasonable estimate.
The purpose of this particular questionnaire was:
"to collect information on how academics have interacted with private, public and charitable organisations in the last three calendar years (2012, 2013 and 2014) and how these interactions are perceived within academia."
So I gave it a go and set the clock running.
Q6 was:
How many times have you engaged in the following people-based activities with external organisations within the past three years? Please tick the activities you have engaged in, and where applicable the number of times you have done so.
I had to do this for 9 areas (e.g., "Participating in networks involving external organisations").
Then came Q9 – not sure what became of Qs 7 & 8)
How many times have you engaged in the following problem-solving activities with external organisations within the past three years? Please tick the activities you have engaged in, and where applicable the number of times you have done so.
This time there were 10 areas (e.g., "Consultancy services (no original research undertaken")
Q10/11 missing, but Q 12 was:
How many times have you engaged in the following community-based activities with external organisations within the past three years? Please tick the activities you have engaged in, and where applicable the number of times you have done so.
There were only 8 areas this time (e.g., "Involvement with social enterprises"). But all this was for 3 years, remember.
I really liked Q26:
"Have the following factors constrained or prevented your interactions with external organisations over the past three years? Please indicate on a scale of 1-5, where 1: not constraining at all and 5: highly constraining"
There were 15 factors (and a helpful "other" category).
It went on and on to Q43, but I'd given up long before this. Good to see, in a way, that the art of writing crap questionnaires has not been lost.
Whatever happened to the HEA?
Respond