Editor’s note: "War Stories" is a regular feature in which Art Shulman, president of Shulman Research, Van Nuys, Calif., presents humorous stories of life in the research trenches.
Mark Michelson of Michelson & Associates relates that a number of years ago his company sent a mystery shopper to evaluate an optical store in Florida. The shopper seemed like a nice guy on the phone and his references were good. For the shop he had to get an exam, buy glasses and return to pick them up.
In between his shopping trips to the store, he was featured on the TV show America’s Most Wanted. The store manager recognized him and had him arrested after he picked up his glasses.
He still managed to send his report in, though.
Dave Chill of Disney Channel reports on a focus group he was moderating. His client arrived just as the session was to begin, sat behind the mirror, took one look at the respondents, and immediately called for the hostess. The client informed the hostess of what she had seen, and the hostess soon entered the focus room and informed one of the female respondents that she had a telephone call. It turns out that the woman, who never returned to the group, was the sister of the late-arriving client.
Ted Dunn, technical consulting director to the Advertising Research Foundation, recalls that he conducted a survey among dog owners concerning their pets. Some of the questions had to do with the functions the dog played in the life of the family.
A few years later, someone else in his client’s company was independently conducting a similar study among cat owners. So they cribbed the earlier questionnaire on dogs, and substituted "cat" for "dog" wherever it appeared on the questionnaire. This was the reason why respondents in the second study were asked if their pet served as a "watchcat."
Dunn also recalls the time that he felt like giving up on the validity of random sampling. He was conducting a survey among 3,000 respondents and randomly chose 10 completed surveys to examine, to give him some idea whether interviewing was properly being conducted. Of the 10, he found interview error on a particular question on eight documents. So, that morning he assigned his entire staff to go over every last questionnaire.
Among the remaining 2,990 documents, his staff found two with interviewer error.
Sometimes respondents put each other in their places. Sig Saltz of Comiskey Research recalls attending a focus group on mouthwash where it became obvious that one particular respondent might be a problem. The hostess had complained about his demeanor during check-in and at times he appeared to be scowling during the session. After about an hour he finally offered a contribution, in a rather gruff voice, "On Friday nights I have friends over for poker. Before we begin, I put a bottle of mouthwash on the card table and tell them they’d better use it!"
A subdued voice from a corner of the table meekly asked, "What do your friends say?"
Without skipping a beat another respondent replied sarcastically, "He doesn’t have many friends!"
The entire group immediately broke into uncontrollable laughter, including the formerly scowling respondent. For the remainder of the session he was a complete teddy bear.