[Announce] Request for survey participants

[Val Henson]

(Apologies to grrls-only members, who have already received this
email.)

Dr. Dholakia is doing some research on internet-based Linux groups and
would very much like to have some female respondents to his survey.
Note that our participation could make LinuxChix eligible for a $500
cash award, which might possibly defray a few weeks' operating costs
for the web and mail servers. :)

The (slightly abridged) notice follows.  Participation is entirely
voluntary, and thanks in advance to anyone who does take the time to
respond.

-VAL

----- Forwarded message from "Utpal M. Dholakia" <dholakia at ruf.rice.edu> -----

I am a faculty member in the Jones school of management at Rice
University in Houston, Texas (this may be verified using a Google
search with "Paul Dholakia", or "Utpal Dholakia"). We are conducting
an academic research project, studying social interactions online more
generally, and specifically how communities organized around products
or brands are formed, from a sociological perspective.

In this regard, we are conducting a survey of people who belong to
internet-based LINUX groups such as mailing lists, websites
etc. seeking information on different elements of their thoughts,
feelings, and motivations of participating in such groups, and the
value of the group to them... In this context, the participants of
your mailing list would be a very attractive (no pun intended!
:))group of target respondents. Your group is especially attractive
since it is likely to be broad-based and this might give exposure of
our survey to many different types of Linux users, with varying levels
of skills, interests, etc. Yours is the only women-oriented LInux
group that I was able to find, and we would especially like female
participants in our study.  Our survey is available on the web at the
following URL:

http://www.surveypro.com/cgi-bin/surveypro/run_survey.cgi?id=2444

Please note that the survey is targeted especially at those individuals
who interact with the more-or-less same group of individuals online within
the mailing list (as in your case) or on some other online forum (more
generally), that is, those who have online friends that they interact with
regularly.

Of course, this research is strictly academic, and has no commercial links
or interests whatsoever. We hope to publish this research in a sociology
journal.

As a small token of our appreciation for participants' time, and in the
spirit of the philosophy underlying the open-source movement, we will
donate a total of $500 to the five favorite organizations/ groups of our
participants' choice (we ask the participant's to nominate their favorite
groups in the survey).

We welcome all help. Please let me know if I can answer any questions.
I hope you are able to help.

Best wishes,
Paul Dholakia

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Dr. Paul Dholakia
Assistant Professor of Management
Rice University
314 Herring Hall - MS 531
6100 Main Street
Houston TX 77005-1892
Tel: 713-348-5376
Fax: 713-348-5251
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~dholakia
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


----- End forwarded message -----