[acb-hsp] Arielle Silverman's Survey

[Arielle Silverman]

Hi all,
I apologize for not addressing the questions and concerns that were
voiced about my survey. After posting it I had unsubscribed from the
ACB-L list, but after Jessie copied me on the correspondence, I
decided to rejoin so that I could address the comments. I particularly
want to offer some clarification regarding the question in my survey
about organizational membership. The primary reason I included this
question was to ensure that the final sample of respondents contained
roughly equal numbers of NFB members, ACB members and those who did
not affiliate with either organization. In other words, I would like
to have a sample that is as representative of the American blind
community as possible and to be able to state in any published
articles exactly how the sample broke down in terms of organizational
membership. Though I am a member of the NFB, I have absolutely no
desire to recruit people to the NFB who are already happily committed
to the ACB. Further, even if for some odd reason I did want to do
this, I couldn't do it by way of the survey because responses are
anonymous. I have no way of tracking down the respondents who stated
they were ACB members to try to recruit them or do anything else
equally ridiculous. I am also not interested in comparing NFB and ACB
members' data, although if it turns out that one group is, say, more
identified with blindness or more concerned about public attitudes
than the other, I'd like to include organizational membership as a
"covariate" and statistically remove this uninteresting effect when I
am conducting my analyses.
Please keep in mind that participating in the survey is voluntary and
there is nothing wrong with skipping questions you are not comfortable
answering or retiring from the survey early if it is taking up too
much of your time. While I appreciate constructive feedback, I feel
that claims that I am "accosting" people with this survey or that I am
not doing my research with ethical integrity are unjustified. Again,
all parts of the survey are optional. I did not state the number of
questions at the beginning, not to be deceptive on purpose, but
because I have simply not seen this done in other surveys in my field.
That said, I am certainly willing to add this information in the
future. Please keep in mind that the survey was approved by the
Institutional Review Board at my university, which monitors the
ethical integrity of all research sponsored by the university. It was
also reviewed by my faculty advisor and two blind friends who tested
it for accessibility and usability.
A question was raised about how to learn about the results. I expect
to have preliminary results by mid-fall and these will be posted to
all the listservs that I contacted to solicit participation.
Best,
Arielle