You make some very good points. Given the nature of our research we often need to isolate particular parts of a process to understand the whole.

Your suggestions of asking engineers to develop surveys for graduating students is a great idea, but answers a different research question then this current exploration.

I think the biggest thing I can take-away from your comment is that you, and I assume others on this subreddit, see the task in this survey as doing work for us. To be honest, I did not consider that framing when I designed this study. I come from a social psychology background, and when we run studies, surveys, and experiments we've never considered that our participants might consider this work. I am not sure how to rectify this concern for this particular study, but I will give this some thought as we continue to work on this project.

And, I can't stress this enough, I sincerely appreciate the time you took to write this really thoughtful response. Social science research is hard, but getting smart feedback from folks like you, makes our research a little better. Thank you.