Dear Villanovan,

My name is Gavin Kilduff, and I am a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. I’m currently working with a professor on a research project on intercollegiate athletics, and we’re wondering if the sportswriters for The Villanovan would be willing to participate in a brief survey. Our specific research interest is on intercollegiate rivalries (e.g., Oklahoma-Texas). We’re interested in how these rivalries develop, as well as what effects they may have, ranging from outcomes of games to levels of fan interest. We’re planning on using the upcoming men’s basketball season as the dataset for this project. One of the things we need is a measure of the strength of rivalry between teams. We feel that student sportswriters are an ideal group to survey for this information, being both avid and knowledgeable fans of their respective teams. The survey we are creating will be online, and will simply ask respondents to rate (on a scale of 1 to 10) the strength of rivalry that they feel their basketball team has with the other basketball teams in the conference. The survey will be anonymous, should only take a couple of minutes to complete, and hopefully, will be fun for those with an interest in intercollegiate sports. Please let me know if The Villanovan has interest in participating in this project. Depending upon what you think is best, I could either send individualized emails to members of the staff or allow you to distribute the link to the survey. Thanks very much for your help, Gavin KilduffPh.D. Student, Organizational Behavior and Industrial RelationsHaas School of BusinessUniversity of California, [email protected]