(05-20-2016, 09:25 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Not at all. There seems to be no limit to what universities will waste money on these days. I'm just saying that it doesn't mean a thing unless they have a relatively diverse sample size that is at least 10 times larger. One has to account for drawing a couple dozen incredibly stupid people in survey style 'experiments' of this nature. Surely you can see that having just 10 such persons can swing the findings in a wrong direction far more than a standard deviation.
You think preliminary studies are a waste of money? REALLY??? The opposite is true, they are done because the folks giving out research grants want to see if paying for a full study is worthwhile and not just a waste of money. These smaller studies are done exactly because money is tight, not because there is a lot of money to waste.