One aspect would be that they used real data for test data aspect and the whole data protection law aspect that can impact that as anybody who has had to produce test data will attest. The days of using a copy of existing data for testing taken many a blow over this.

Then the people factor - if you get a survey asking for your views of XYZ in the area, you will kinda start to think XYZ is happening and won't know the difference from students doing an exercise over official - it's a happening people.

But asking questions can often have unforeseen impacts. For example - if your company sent out a questionnaire to see who likes Christmas or not then some employees may well think that the company is going to cancel Christmas bonus or other worst cases as that is an aspect of human nature. So somebody asking for a training exercise some questions could see people joining dots and run with it and next you know, protests for something that was never going to happen.