Player preferences among new and old violins.

Most violinists believe that instruments by Stradivari and Guarneri "del Gesu" are tonally superior to other violins--and to new violins in particular. Many mechanical and acoustical factors have been proposed to account for this superiority; however, the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has not yet been properly investigated. Player's judgments about a Stradivari's sound may be biased by the violin's extraordinary monetary value and historical importance, but no studies designed to preclude such biasing factors have yet been published. We asked 21 experienced violinists to compare violins by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu with high-quality new instruments. The resulting preferences were based on the violinists' individual experiences of playing the instruments under double-blind conditions in a room with relatively dry acoustics. We found that (i) the most-preferred violin was new; (ii) the least-preferred was by Stradivari; (iii) there was scant correlation between an instrument's age and monetary value and its perceived quality; and (iv) most players seemed unable to tell whether their most-preferred instrument was new or old. These results present a striking challenge to conventional wisdom. Differences in taste among individual players, along with differences in playing qualities among individual instruments, appear more important than any general differences between new and old violins. Rather than searching for the "secret" of Stradivari, future research might best focused on how violinists evaluate instruments, on which specific playing qualities are most important to them, and on how these qualities relate to measurable attributes of the instruments, whether old or new.

Research methodology: an innovative approach to a venerable course.

This paper outlines a number of innovations that we have recently implemented in the Research Methodology Course at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health. Consistent with the goals of evidence-based medicine, evidence-based public health, intrinsic motivation, and phase 4 (T4) translational research, we have placed the emphasis on enhancing the students' desire to learn-and more specifically on their desire to learn rigorous methods for conducting useful research that delivers practical benefits in a straightforward manner. A dozen innovations, along with some preliminary outcomes, are outlined in detail.

Web surveys' hidden hazards.

The same question posed on the Web and in print can yield very different answers, dramatically distorting survey results and misleading management. But, as psychologist Palmer Morrel-Samuels demonstrates, the problems are readily fixed.

Getting the truth into workplace surveys.

There's no doubt that companies can benefit from workplace surveys and questionnaires. Good surveys accurately home in on the problems the company wants information about. They are designed so that as many people as possible actually respond. And good survey design ensures that the spectrum of responses is unbiased. In this article, the author, a former research scientist at the University of Michigan and currently the president of a survey design firm, explores some glaring failures of survey design and provides 16 guidelines to improve workplace assessment tools. Applied judiciously, these rules will not only make a tangible difference in the quality and usefulness of the data obtained but will also produce an increased response rate. The guidelines--and the problems they address--fall into five areas: content, format, language, measurement, and administration. Here are a few examples: Survey questions should require people to assess observable behavior rather than make inferences; each section should contain a similar number of items and each item should have a similar number of words; words with strong associations to gender, race, or ethnicity should be avoided; the wording in one-third of the questions should be changed so that the desirable answer is a negative one; and response scales should provide a "don't know" or "not applicable" option. Following the guidelines in this article will help you get unbiased, representative, and useful information from your workplace survey.