Is your survey selfish?
What a strange thought, isn’t it? How can a survey be selfish?
All surveys have both a selfish and selfless component to them. For instance, new products are created in order to improve people’s lives, to make things easier or quicker or more efficient or more fun. When people answer surveys, they get better products. Researchers make the world a better place by conducting their research.
On the other hand, surveys are very much selfish in that they are designed to help someone make more money. When people tell researchers how to make a product better, more people buy the product, and the company commissioning the research makes more money. That survey puts money in someone’s pocket.
When you put selfless and selfish together, the research process is a good one that benefits everyone. But when people can only see the selfish side of a survey, not the selfless side, it makes it difficult for them to invest their time to contribute well-thought out, quality answers.
Think about the following pairs of questions:
Please tell us which colour is most appropriate for this product.
Which colour do you think is most appropriate for this product?
Please watch our commercials and tell us what you think?
What is your opinion about this commercial?
Finally, please answer a few more questions to help us out.
Finally, just a few more questions to better understand your thoughts.
In each case, the first question is focused on the researcher — what the researcher needs and wants, what matters to the researcher. And, the second question is focused on the respondent — what the respondent thinks and feels, what is important to people.
You may think that there isn’t a big difference, that both questions generate the same result in the end. But I beg to differ. The second question shows people that we care about their opinions and that it isn’t all about me.
As you can see, it’s quite easy to re-focus a question from selfish to selfless. And since I want to keep response rates high, I for one am going to do all I can to make sure respondents know that I value their opinion more than my needs. I hope you will too.
