Surveys

I wish people who make up research questions would come up with some better ways of defining how you answer. I don't find the boxes they want to fit you into at all satisfactory, and I can't see how they give accuracy to the overall survey. No wonder they talk about error factors of up to 5% - I'd rank it considerably higher in fact!

I laughed out loud a couple of times at a survey I did on the phone tonight. Twaddle about whether a certain cereal made me feel good about my day. Only someone who worked in an advertising agency could possibly answer that with sincerity.

But it's the questions that have to be answered with a choice somewhere between strongly disagree and strongly agree that niggle me. Sometimes that kind of answer just doesn't fit the question. Yet surveyers time and again use it as an answering approach; plainly someone got hold of it once when it actually suited the questions it was applied to, and they've all been on the bandwagon ever since!