I work in the alarm industry, and one of my vendors has a unique approach to
marketing surveys. About once a year they mail me a survey, and they
include a dollar in the envelope along with a note. "We realize that your
time is very valuable, and while the dollar enclosed doesn't cover the time
to fill out our survey we hope that it will help. Our survey is used within
the industry for suppliers and manufacturers to tailor their offerings to
your needs. In addition to the dollar enclosed, if you fill out and return
the enclosed survey we will mail to you a copy of the final report generated
from this survey."

I have filled out their survey most years. Once or twice I just pocketed
the dollar and tossed it, but most years they got their results from me.

I realize that if you are truly "just" doing a student project this may be a
little out of you price range. I know a hundred dollars was like a million
when I was in college.

On the other hand, it is highly likely that your professor is assigning you
to do research that he will turn around and use commercially. It is very
common practice in the college and university environment for instructors to
do this.

I ran across it while writing some assembly language utilities myself. I
wrote a very neat text / hex editor that did absolute reads & writes to a
drive. You could use it to copy any drive to another drive amoung other
things. It was also very handy for trouble shooting utility programs
written in assembler. I took the time to dress it up with lots of fancy
bells and whistles as well as multiple viewing formats to make using it
easier. I also wrote a version to execute 20 times, and then seek out
copies of itself and delete them all including the copy that was executing.

A couple months later the instructor told me that he was having a problem
with the program I wrote. (I already had my grade for his class.) I asked
him to have his client get in touch with me directly. I would be glad to
provide them with a non copyright protected version of the program for a
small fee. His mouth snapped shut, and he walked away with out saying
another word.

Since then in business classes and scinece classes I have run similar
circumstances. If the instructor is paying you to be a research assistant
out of his department's budget then go for it, but if its just part of your
grade he is commercially benefiting from your work without paying you. I
suppose it may be difficult to get out of doing it if it is part of his
class requirements, but I would certainly find out. If you could use some
extra money you might be able to get a part time job assisting him with his
research.

--
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"Joe" wrote in message
...
To 'a-happy-up-yours',

I know market researchers are annoying and will try everything to get a
survey filled out. I actually am a student at the University of
Saskatchewan
and my professor wants me to get 100 surveys filled out for my business
plan. I do not know 100 people from the United States who are interested
in
fishing, so I thought I would post for help on some newsgroups.

If this offended you, I am sorry.. I am not a specialist on newsgroup
etiquette.

Joe Bell



"a-happy-up-yours" wrote
in
message link.net...
Joe wrote:
My name is Joe Bell and for a school project I am making a business
plan
for
a fly-in fishing lodge in Northern Saskatchewan. Information gathered
from
this survey will help me in setting up my business to best meet the
needs of
potential customers. The information will be destroyed once the data
is
analyzed. Your time and effort in completing this survey would be
greatly
appreciated.

Visit on the following link to complete the survey:

http://homepage.usask.ca/~jmb897/survey.htm



Upon receipt of a valid email address, I will forward a copy of my
professional
rate schedule and a basic contract outlining the terms that will apply.
Once a
contract is in place and the initial payment received, I will be pleased
to
provide any pertinent information that I hold and which fits your
criteria. In
case this is outside your current range of interests and you are mining
valuable
data without compensation, kindly note my email address.

Tom