Best way to connect with hosts

[Mansour17]

I am a PhD student working on a research paper about Airbnb hosts. I have created the survey but I am struggling to find ways to reach out to Airbnb hosts to take my survey and help me with my research project.

What is the best way to reach out to hosts? Are hosts usually open to help out with such requests?

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Mansour17 Sometimes the moderators such as @Jenny allow students to post the survey on here. Lets see what they say.

[Bob297]

@Mansour17 

I would be willing to complete the survey if the moderators allow you to publish it here.

[Cheryl863]

Hi @Mansour17 

I was a research student too and had great support whilst studying in England; would be happy to fill out the survey. Please note that I am very new here in comparison to @Bob297 and @Mike-And-Jane0 . 

All the best Mansour. 

With kind regards

Cheryl 

[Jenny]

Hi @Mansour17 

Thanks to @Mike-And-Jane0 for tagging me!

While we don't allow third party surveys e.g. links to an external document, you are more than welcome to start a new discussion post, and detail your questions within the post, then any interested members of the Community Center can decide if they'd like to reply or not.

I hope this helps!

Jenny

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Jenny I wonder if the CC moderators would be willing to modify this policy to allow surveys from certain free of charge providers such as survey monkey? The would ensure surveys are safe and also allow the student to collate responses automatically. 

[Ana2038]

@Jenny , your suggestions seems reasonable. Personally, I am hesitant completing any survey/research as it pertains to short term rentals. I certainly would not want the outcome of research/survey to be used against short term rentals and/or their host(s). 

Just my two cents….l

[Till-and-Jutta0]

Conducting academic studies often involves field surveys. So I certainly understand when students choose the Community Center or Airbnb Facebook groups to recruit potential participants.

On the other hand, as Admins of various groups, we observe survey fatigue among members. Caused on the one hand by the fact that the questions are often very similar (lack of originality), and on the other hand by the fact that results are not published in the group (as often promised) (lack of transparency).

For this reason, we therefore generally no longer publish calls to answer any survey by clicking on a link.

We, on the other hand, encourage students to ask their questions directly in the group. This gives the participants a direct insight and may even lead to a discussion of the content (public feedback), which also benefits the group from the survey and encourages them to engage with the respective study topic.

Unfortunately, students do not make use of this opportunity so far, and they do not take advantage of the opportunity to participate in the exchange of experiences in groups and forums.