Hi!

I'm currently living in Kunming where I'm trying to learn some Chinese while at the same time doing research for my master's thesis. I have designed an online-survey but having a hard time finding enough respondents I thought I would give goKunming a go.

So...if you are Chinese and every now and then have a cup of coffee please lend me a couple of minutes of your time. The questionnaire can be found on this internet address: coffee.limeask.com/52785 (No www!)

You will be finished in a few minutes and by then you will have done me a great favor. All information will be treated confidentially and only used in my thesis.

Thank you very much for helping me

I'm not Chinese, but what I noticed that other than coffee, lemon is also rare in China. Except for Xichuanbanna, no one in China uses it. But come to think about it, all food is an acquired taste.

Beware of where you do your research as this will skew the results. You need to bear in mind that those Chinese who visit/contribute to GoKunming will most probably be Anglophiles, and of a certain demographic. They are probably the same subset who will visit coffee bars, and they will not represent the general populous.

Just something you should consider and note in you thesis as a potential cause of bias.

Couldn't you just walk to any of the four Starbucks in town or the many many cafes on Wenlinjie and just ask?

Lemons: Yes, It is rare. Fortunately there is a convenience store where I live that sells them. Not too expensive either even though they look exclusive in their individual wrappings.

Survey: Yes! Bias is a risk. But by using an anonymous online-survey as a tool there is already a risk in that the result will now represent the views of the whole population. It is too much of a convenience sampling strategy... Perhaps in a few years we will know that the people on goKunming and coffee drinkers share exactly the same characteristics :-)

Asking people: I am telling/asking everyone I meet to take the survey. The main reason behind choosing the online survey was that it was thought to be a time saver. Manually running around handing out surveys and watching people fill them out not only wastes a lot of paper it is also extremely time consuming. So is transferring responses into spss or excel. I have a dead-line coming up and was thinking this would save me a lot of time. However, wasn't expecting people to be this difficult to persuade into filling out the survey so perhaps another time, another place I would have done it differently. You will probably soon find me in cafés any day now, asking people to please help me out...

The cafes mostly have wifi, and most people have 3g on usb or smartphone. You could just hand them a slip of paper explaining your circumstances and http address; they would most likely take it right there after they figure out you aren't a salesperson. Sure you would suffer the selectivity bias of cafe patrons who have computers or smartphones, but then again, that might be the majority.

GoKunming is still a 90% expat website. Very few everyday Chinese, even the English speaking college educated ones visit this site.

I am Chinese.

5 years ago when I first drunk coffee, (that was in high school),
i found it bitter and very distasteful.

But now I drink coffee everyday, still I cannot drink coffee without putting milk or suger in it. I like cappuccino a lot.

Young people tend to love coffee more in China,
my parents never drunk coffee, they are used to tea and hot water. But when I walk into Starbucks, I can see quite a lot young Chinese.

@AlexKMG

Seriously, if you go into Starbucks and ask people, you will only be asking that group of people who like coffee. People who don't like coffee don't usually frequent Starbucks. That group may represent 90% of the population or they may represent 1% of the population, and therein lies the problem.

This research if for a Master's.

@tigertiger
I think the OP is looking for coffee drinkers and not the general population.

@Alex
You are right, I was wrong. Mae Culpa.

The results of this research will look like market research. In fact the survey does look like market research. Unless the Master's has a strong marketing bias...