starlord's Questions

It's pretty simple: I create surveys to satisfy my curiosity. Surveys are:

  • Easy to deploy.
  • Good at reaching people.
  • Simple to complete.

So I self-hosted LimeSurvey. I believe in full transparency. This page should explain what's going on.

There's also a Lemmy Community for discussions.

Table of Contents

Why

In order of likelihood:

  1. I am curious about something.
    • How many people drive one- vs two-handed?
  2. To help understand or solve a social problem.
    • Identify areas/members of a community most impacted by a natural disaster.
  3. Someone has asked me to do research.
    • Online community wants to give users an option to vote on new features.
  4. Someone is paying me to do research.
    • Research lab seeks to gauge awareness of a recently released medical treatment.

Policy

The Only Data I Collect is the answers to the survey questions. They will almost always be selections from a limited list of responses in order to avoid anything requiring user entry.

Principals

  • Do not collect user data. (Emails, phone #s, IPs, names, etc.)
  • Avoid user text entry.
  • Participation is optional.
  • All answers are optional.
  • Submissions are entirely annonymous.
  • Submissions per participant are unlimited.

Money

There is no money.

I do not want my information sold, so I will not do the same to others. I do not collect the kind of information valuable enough to sell because it attracts the wrong sort. Also, it is unecessary to (and can even pollute) the information I seek.

So I never sell the information I gather, and I never gather information that has monetary value.

Also there are no ads: I have no costs to cover other than hosting fees which I pay for other projects anyway.

Exception

In rare cases, someone will come to me (I do not solicit) to get a question answered.

In this case, a fee is exchanged for conducting the research and is not based at all on what information is being gathered. Information delivered is aggregated to obscure all but the necessary trends.

Surveys like this will always be clearly marked.

Privacy, Security, Annonymity

I'm not interested in personal information. The closest I'd get is vague demographics like the decade you were born or what are your dietary preferences. Anything more personal is unecessary and probably useless to the question being asked.

If a portion of the survey asks for personal details, it is a built-in feature and is not part of my purpose and will not be required.

So far as I am able, I will maintain that all tools (surveys, docs, websites, wikis, etc.) are self-hosted and, preferably, FOSS. Encryption is also used at multiple layers where possible.

The Data

I take matters of data security, transparency, obfuscation, and transmission very seriously.

Where is it?

The data stays in the survey app until I'm ready for it. (A database on the self-hosted server.)

How's it used?

Typically limited only to my own exploration. However, I may also:

  • Export it as-is for a student to practice data intelligence techniques.
  • Render it into a database of my own design for performing instruction.
  • Assign its interpretation as homework.
  • Aggregate it into visuals to discover deeper data stories.
  • Use insights to develop or support concepts for blog posts, which are public.

Who sees it?

Only me and, in some cases, a student of mine who is learning data science. In this case, data is sanitized/redacted prior to instruction if necessary.

What about data deletion?

The information collection is deliberately and thoroughly anonymized, making it impossible to distinguish individual records. As a result, if it were requested that I delete a record, I would have no way of targeting the correct one.

However, if a strong enough case is presented, I am willing to purge an entire collection.

Can I see a copy?

If you want to see the data, just give me a reason. I'll review case-by-case.

Get In Touch

Use the contact links in the site footer.