Reading this:
http://www.slowleadership.org/2007/06/making-it-past-law-of-small-numbers.html

I was reminded of the Library surveys we used to do at TheOldPlace each month. Informal polls that would pop up after X number of hits on the catalogue. We kept them short to encourage people to fill them in, and then changed them every month. Each year we started over with the questions (for the most part) so that we had some consistency over time.

Sometimes largish numbers of people would fill them in. But sometimes not very many bothered. Certainly not a statistically valid sample. But we'd still spend hours (or maybe it just felt like hours) discussing the results, agonizing over whether we should do x, y or z in response and sometimes even get hung up on just one 'comment' that had been made. (We never did take up the request made one time for "more naked librarians" - though I was curious about the 'more'.)

Gee, I'm glad I'm not responsible for reporting on those surveys any more.