I hate asking people for things - I'll buy a whole book of raffle tickets myself rather than try to sell any.  Yet I don't mind when other people ask me to buy a raffle ticket … or fill in a questionnaire. Not usually.

I didn't like being hounded by HESA to return their questionnaire, though - that felt intrusive, or would have if I hadn't already returned it at the second request.  I suppose it depends how many other things a person is juggling - in the last week, a few things I've agreed to do (write references, review papers, be an internal examiner, see students and many other things) have suddenly materialised rather too closely together.  If anyone sent me a survey just now, I'd be likely to ignore it (apart from people on the Research Methods module, of course).

When we ask someone to complete a survey for us, we have no idea what level of burden or anxiety it might be adding to an already overfull intray.  I suppose that is what causes me concern, especially if they see it as a pointless exercise for them.  I'm OK with piloting our group questionnaire on some of my colleagues - so I'm not recording a concern about that here.  While I was reading Robson this morning, I just became very conscious of my reluctance to use surveys in general, other than things that can be done very quickly (like the one-minute paper, as a classroom evaluation tool, for instance). 

When I have used the simple single open question surveys described in my last entry, these didn't put immediate pressure on any individual to stop everything to attend to my research.  Rather, I got a quick response from those who were interested in the topic.  That didn't feel as though it was being intrusive, though no doubt there were some who thought, "oh no - not another email from her".

I think that that my concern about being intrusive means that surveys are not for me.  It possibly also accounts for some of the idiosyncracies of my research history - and some other things that I'm still thinking about. But questionnaire fatigue is a real danger, especially among students.