I made my living doing survey research (scientific & public sector). I wouldn't be too skeptical unless something called an informed consent was not offered. It's obvious when informed consent is offered. It's a guarantee of confidentiality, that individual data will never be used in a way where the individual can be identified and a full description of all intended and future uses of the data. Ethical guidelines for many market research industry associations also guarantee that the survey client never has access to the identities of respondents to a survey and some other things as well. I might be a bit skeptical if a market research company wasn't a member of a recognized industry association, but the industry protects survey respondents pretty well. The industry has an interest in confidentiality. It's tough enough interesting people to participate in market studies, and a breech of confidentiality scandal would damage the entire industry. So, why does somebody want to pay people for looking at tractors? There's just too many market surveys done now, and people got tired of having the egos tickled by somebody asking for their opinion. All that means is opinions are valuable, because somebody is making money by collecting them. Research companies used to get opinions for nothing. However, ego tickling encountered some serious diminishing returns in providing value in exchange for an opinion. Now, you generally have to pay people for their opinions to get adequate participation in a study. In general, that's actually good, because it recognizes opinions as economically valuable. It should be good for me too since I can be very opinionated--possibly I could be rich just from my opinions.

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