Talk:Canadian university students would prefer MP3 players over car radios

My name is Darren Mar and I'm a 4th year student at Wilfrid Laurier University. The reason I decided to conduct this survey was because I had recently bought a new car with just such an MP3 in-dash feature. I slowly started to notice that I was not listening to the radio at all, and was often getting caught in traffic. I also work at the school's gym, and have been aware that most people come in to work out with their own personal MP3 devices. No one really comes in without some sort of music device, because the radio station we play is not really the right music for the gym. I figured if you put two and two together, it only makes sense that people would want to listen to their own music in the car if they could safely and easily. So I conducted the survey on Monday, March the 5th, 2007 (I don't have class Monday). I went to the concourse (the main area of the university that sees the most traffic) and randomly pulled people aside until I hit 150 and asked if they had an MP3 player (many were listening to them right then, so I just moved on to the question of whether they would listen to their own music in the car if they could). I dismissed the other possibility of burning personal CD's (because why would you spend the time and money if you don't have to?).

Inline links
Inline links that go off foundation sites are frowned upon, plus you'd need to provide more than one auto manufacturer that has MP3 facilities in the car. With one it looks like an advert for their product. --Brian McNeil / talk 14:51, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

This is my first time doing this. All good points you raise, thanks for letting me know so I can fix these for the next time.

Narrow canvas
I think that the canvas of the survey is too narrow to conclude that "Students would prefer MP3 ..." Perhaps "Canadian students ..." or "University students ..." or "Canadian university students..." Of course, the most precise headline would be "Students at Wilfrid Laurier University would prefer MP3 players over car radios" --SVTCobra 22:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Published
I did a date bump and published this, so it should be up on the front page now. Nice work, notice how the mention of specific products had to be sorted so you can't be accused of bias in favour of one manufacturer. Okay, iPod gets prominence, but it is the de-facto standard player, and the one car makers are going to accomodate first. --Brian McNeil / talk 10:25, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Why the date bump? I'm not really happy with it... seems like the survey took place some time ago.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 10:41, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The date on the article would have seen it vanish into the collapsed sections and the report isn't that time-critical. That's why I did the bump.  It is honest in the article about when the survey was done so I don't have any problem with that, it isn't that stale. --Brian McNeil / talk 14:29, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Question Incongruity?
How can you ask "would you rather X or Y?" when the answers are "Yes, No, Both?" That seems to not fit in line with proper polling procedures.
 * This should probably be X instead of Y, not OR. --Brian McNeil / talk 14:25, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Confirmed details
I have (finally) got a mail from Darren that confirms he's at wlu.ca. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I sent him an email yesterday asking him to clarify. He responded via his wlu account. — Fellow Wiki  Newsie  17:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)