E-mail template
From Dar
I decided to use a standard template for all the e-mails. I wanted to give a clear indication of the subjects to be covered so that participants would start to form their ideas before we spoke.
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Template
Dear .....
- Andy has been asked to write a report for his professional association about the financial model used by ukcider (i.e. free) so that they can include it in a comparison of various ways of running communities online. As part of it he has asked me to act as his researcher and collect some data from prominent cider making members of the group.
- I would like to interview you as part of this. It can either be done by e-mail interview or, ideally, by phone. It would consist of a few simple questions, mostly about how you use the group, and your views on the impact or otherwise of the financial model.
- Your anonymity would be preserved. This is not meant to be a huge in-depth project but just a fairly informal chat with a few prominent members of the group. I hope you will feel able to say yes :-)
- The relevant sections of the final report will be fed back to the mailing list for feedback, obviously no names or identifiable information will be included.
- Please let me know one way or the other in the next couple of days so that I can arrange a convenient time for you.
- Yours sincerely
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Changes to the Template
I had a very quick response from one participant who wanted to be assured that even the group facilitator would not see the interviews in their raw state, with names included. I therefore made the following change and added:
- Even Andy will not see the raw data until it is anonymised.
This was a small change and seemed like a sensible one.
