From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,76f19a5f656fa576 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: tmoran@bix.com Subject: Re: Embedded Systems Survey Date: 2000/08/04 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 654303713 References: <398A21B9.DB93DF7B@earthlink.net> X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: news.pacbell.net 965365621 24.20.190.201 (Thu, 03 Aug 2000 22:07:01 PDT) Organization: SBC Internet Services NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2000 22:07:01 PDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-08-04T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: >If you really need to assure people that the survey is anonymous, >you have to use a method which people will trust. "Mail the postcard" surveys have their own problems. Adding an innocuous question with answer obviously unknown to the interviewer is one way of increasing anonymity, even with a numbered postcard or a face-to-face interviewer. I think it's clever. Since it adds known noise to lessen error, I suppose it's analogous to dithering for improving printing.