Editor’s note: "War Stories" is a regular feature in which Art Shuhnan, president of Shulman Research, Van Nuys, Calif., presents humotvus stories of life in the research trenches.
Moderator Paul Schne!ler was pleased to see that a Florida focus group facility was giving written instructions to its recruiters. But he was a little taken aback when he read, "In recruiting, you will be screening to obtain 12 women per goup who are automatic dishwashers on a regular basis."
Jake McHugh of Ameritas Life Insurance conducts an annual satisfaction study among members of the dental plan his company provides. This past year they included a dollar bill as an incentive, together with a note reading, "At your next coffee break enjoy a beverage on us." One respondent sent back a completed questionnaire along with the dollar bill and a note saying, "I’m now retired and no longer have a coffee break. So I’m returning the dollar."
Is there such a thing as too much honesty?
Recently we worked on a toy survey conducted in several European countries. The questionnaire had to be translated into several languages. When the versions came back from each country for approval, we noticed that the version to be used in England was changed in one way from the U.S. version. Our original questionnaire asked for the "Mom’s Name." In the England version of the questionnaire, interviewers were to write in the "Mum’s Name." Also, when we received the completed questionnaires from England we learned that apparently in England there are no "bad guys." Rather, kids refer to the villains as "baddies."
Alice Strauss of Interviewing Service of America tells about her early days as a door-to-door interviewer. One day, while wearing a minidress, she knocked on the door of an elderly man and asked if she could interview him. He replied, "I’ll give you the interview if you let me look at your legs." Strauss mulled over his proposal. Incidence was low, production had been low, and the day was drawing to a close. So she said, "OK, as long as you stay on your side of the room and I stay on the other side." Strauss reports that it was a pretty big room.
Larry Sherman, who’d recently beenhired as director of research at Sanwa Bank, reports that he was at an interdepartmental meeting. A senior executive from another depamnent, who’d only recently met Sherman, was chairing the meeting and introduced him as Larry Sanders, the same name as the main character on comedian Gary Shandling’s HBO show.
Sherman was sitting next to the director of human resources, whom he knew fairly well. After the two of them exchanged glances to acknowledge the name mix-up, Sherman asked the HR director if she would officially change his name in the records. "Next thing you know you’ll be asking me for his level of compensation," she said.
"That was my next question," Sherman replied.
Mark Snowden is a media strategist for a large Christian missions organization. He tells about participating on a team conducting a media preference survey across the Americas that included several Indian groups. They were really pleased with the response, netting more than 6,000 surveys. However, when they received the 100 completed questionnaires from the K’ekchi in Guatemala they quickly noticed that they were all filled out identically! At first they suspected tampering by a leader or a missionary, but each form (translated into K’ekchi) had been meticulously completed by a different person who boldly signed his or her name at the end. Later, his team determined that the ancient Mayan custom still lingered - for a goup consensus to be reached on every question, even in a questionnaire.
And, yes, his team included each of the 100 completed questionnaires in their survey results.
Doug Conwell of the Tampa Tribune tells about a survey conducted for a local hospital. A 17-year-old male interviewer, very new to surveying, indicated that a respondent traveled out of her area to visit her "dinacologist," followed by a string of question marks.
Another entry for the "Where do we find these interviewers?" file.