The Web-based software Surveyor was
used to construct and administer the CSIQ via
the Internet. Invitations and follow-ups to participants
were also administered by Surveyor.
Confidentiality, anonymity, and one-time
responses were guaranteed by means of a
secure Web-server, automated invitation and
follow-up to participants, and randomly-generated-
password access to the CSIQ. A multistage
clustering was conducted to compile a
list of 659 e-mail addresses from the five
groups of interest based on the professional
profile that was published on the selected journals
or posted on the Web. The initial e-mailed
invitation for participation in the research used
Surveyor’s features for survey invitation.
Thirty-four messages were automatically
returned to the researcher because of invalid
e-mail addresses. These 34 addresses were
deleted from the invitation list. Hence, a total
of 625 composed the final list of invitation
recipients.