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If you use a BlackBerry for any business-related purposes – and if you're reading this, we bet you do – The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) wants you!

The college is doing research in the form of an online survey to try and gauge the effects of always-on mobile connectivity on professionals' work/life balance.

From the institute's Web page:
"Project Crackberry is a research project which aims to study the impact of push-mail technology (e.g. via Blackberry) on productivity and work-life balance of professionals."

As far as I can tell, the survey is open to anyone and everyone, and you can vote as many times as you'd like, so I'm not sure how "scientific" its results will be, but why not take 5 minutes and help out some up-and-coming poli-sci boffins.

The queries in the 24-question survey – mostly multiple choice –are more or less what you'd expect, but a few of them caught my eye. For example, one question asks you to rate the accuracy of a number of statements including this one:

"I am a self-declared 'crackberry' ('Crackberry ' is a nickname for the Blackberry that was coined because of the device's addictive nature)."

I believe the word "addict" or something of the like should be in there after "crackberry" – a junkie would not say "I'm a self-declared heroin," for instance – or maybe the survey authors just aren't as familiar with the terminology as us real "CrackBerrys." (Wink, wink).

I got a good laugh out of that one, regardless.

The one complaint I have with the survey is that there's no way to see where your responses ranked amongst other participants. There's also nowhere to enter in an e-mail address or phone number to be contacted when the results are gathered, though it does request such information if you're willing to participate in additional research.

Anyway, a lot of paper and ink has been expended on discussing Blackberry addiction and addicts.

More often than not, these terms are used in humorous contexts and not to describe real issues that seriously affect people and their loved ones. For many of us, "quitting" our BlackBerrys or smartphones, or simply leaving them at work once in a while, isn't even a consideration. And that's really not good.

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