Fwd: Hallo, and a request => Please help

[Jim]

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This came to me and piqued my interest.  Someone is actually doing a study 
about Linux User Groups.  It looks legitimate.  I took the survey in less 
than 10 minutes.  I encourage you to take it too.  Of course, I recommend 
that you put PLUG in as the name of the group who you would like to receive 
ther $100 stipend, if selected.

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Subject: Hallo, and a request => Please help
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 15:04:50 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Utpal M. Dholakia" <dholakia@ruf.rice.edu>


Hi folks:

I am a faculty member in the Jones school of management at Rice University
in Houston (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 members of your LUG would be a very
attractive group of target respondents. Your group is especially
attractive since it is large, broad-based and this might give exposure of
our survey to many different types of Linux users, with varying levels of
skills, interests, etc. 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).

I am writing to you to see if members of your chapter might be interested
in helping us out by participating in the survey. Of course, I also invite
you personally to participate as well if you have the time.

Please note that I am extremely sensitive to netiquette issues, and
apologize for any intrusion. I am emailing moderators of several
Linux-related lists to make similar requests, so if you moderate multiple
linux-related groups or email lists, and receive more than one message
from me, I again sincerely apologize. I want to minimize this kind of
inconvenience as much as possible.

If you do consider it appropriate, it would be wonderful if you could
forward an abridged version of this message to your LUG members suggesting
(or even better, encouraging) participation in our research. Please feel
free to post only the relevant portion of this message, to make any
changes, and to add any personal comments you might have to this message,
should you choose to post it.

Also, I am not a Linux expert. Consequently, I would especially welcome
any suggestions that you might have about other groups or organizations
that you may be aware of, that might be suitable to approach for
conducting this type of research, and who might be interested in
participating.

Of course, it goes without saying that broad participation and a large
sample size will increase the validity and generalizability of our
findings, making our research more useful.

We welcome all help. Please let me know if I can answer any questions. I
sincerely hope you can support our research.

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
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