Editor's note: In this regular feature, Art Shulman, president of Shulman Research, Van Nuys, Calif., presents humorous stories of life in the research trenches. Readers are invited to call or write Shulman with stories of their own.

A few years ago, while trying out for a quiz show, I identified myself as a market research consultant. The emcee asked what a market research consultant does, and I explained that we determine why people buy products. When he asked for an example, all I could come up with was. "We've found that little girls are more likely to buy something if it's the color pink."

He then queried, "And exactly how much did your client pay you for that consultation?"

I was embarrassed. But no more embarrassed than Janice Strickler was when, early in her career while conducting door-to-door interviews, the opening door revealed a naked woman who asked how she could be of help. Strickler, ever the professional proceeded with the interview on detergents, neither woman bringing up the respondent's nudity. In the midst of the interview the woman's children returned from school and walked by as if nothing out of the ordinary was occurring. Maybe the woman wasn't wearing anything because all of her clothes were in the wash.

Speaking of door-to-door interviews, a few years ago a meticulous but unnamed field director was trying to complete a study where the research design called for in-person interviews using a detailed sampling plan he insisted needed to be carefully adhered to. When the New Orleans interviewing service reported difficulties, he flew there and knocked on the doors his sampling plan directed him to. And that was how he successfully interviewed one of the most notorious madams in New Orleans, who'd serviced folks with strange appetites in her time, but never one who got his jollies by asking opinions about urban renewal.

Sometimes clients can be coarse. Joel Lowell of Eclectica, a market research consulting firm, remembers a mall survey, attended by his client, where mall traffic was slow and the interviewing service had trouble obtaining qualified women to participate in the study. So Lowell's client, not a professional marketing researcher, stood on the mall asking women under the age of 35 as they passed by, "How'd you like to make $20?" Mall security soon put a stop to that!

One procedure my firm uses for testing the appeal of new toys is setting out an array of toys, handing out some play money, and asking moms and their kids which toys they'd buy. A day after participating in such a study, a mother called back and reported that when she returned home, her 5-year-old daughter went directly to her room, took out all her toys, neatly arranging them around the room, and began to play a game in which she bought toys, called "market research interview."

In order to be effective, researchers must ensure that management and clients have confidence in them. Harry Heller is a master at making clients feel everything is under control. In his office at the advertising agency we worked at, a curious assistant account exec asked one of those questions to which there is no exact answer: "How many cities do you need to conduct a valid copy test?" Without batting an eyelash, Heller asserted, "Six." The assistant account executive walked away with a piece of learning he was confident he could use the rest of his career.

Trade-Off Marketing's Harris Goldstein reports he conducted a survey where the computer printout revealed a relatively high percentage of no answers when Canadian men were asked what type of underwear they wore - boxer shorts or briefs. Suspicious of the high number of no answers, Goldstein investigated further and found no interviewer or data processing errors. His conclusion: a relatively high percentage of Canadian men don't wear underwear.