achievements

So my brother and I started playing PSO again on Ephinea because we thought the idea of achievements was interesting. Concerning the "Explorer" achievements, what exactly are the "survey" quests? Also, can the achievements be completed on lower difficulties? We're pretty casual players, but...

After collecting all 7 items shown here I was surprised that the achievement did not display on-screen. I left it a day or so just in case it updated into the achievement-list still but it has not. I asked @Matt & @Ryan to check the logs for me with the dates/times I gave. They are below...