consumers recall vast amounts of information about products which are very often not that important to them.
Once we learn what information we can get from respondents accurately the quality of research will rise.
It will also show us which methodologies are the best to use. I suspect mobile will come out as the best simply because it can be used“ in the moment” which minimizes the problems of recall. Better to get 5 questions from a respondent when they are in the supermarket than 20 a week later when they are at home.
Are small enterprises able to leverage the power of surveys? If so what more changes you intend to
suggest in coming 5 years?
Question text should be made as short as possible
“ lowering the cognitive load of a survey is probably a more realistic goal than making it more interesting”
As an insight expert what are some of the changes you will like to recommend that will have a positive impact on the survey research industry?
Andrew Jeavons: As I mentioned we need to work out why respondents respond, that is something been ignored for too long. Survey complexity and length have to be addressed somehow; with better quality data we have better quality research.
What we really need to do is take an in-depth look at the assumptions and expectations of surveys. There is a huge amount of evidence from research on eye witness testimony in legal cases which show us that people are not very good at remembering. If people cannot recall which person attacked another person and what they looked like, then how reliable is their recall of what they did in the supermarket on the last visit they made? Is it reasonable to expect a high level of recall about what shampoo you bought last week? We are heavily invested in the idea that
Andrew Jeavons: I think smaller companies can get easy access to survey technology, companies such as Survey Monkey and Survey Gizmo provide great systems at an economic price. However technology is not enough, the design of a study and the interpretation of the results is more important.
I feel that frequent short surveys can be far more powerful than“ kitchen sink” surveys; I’ d like to see more emphasis placed on this approach.
The temptation to have long surveys has to be resisted. Indeed it would be great to have a written“ survey pledge”( like Grover Norquist’ s tax pledge) signed by companies who perform surveys and clients agreeing that their surveys will always be less than 20 minutes, have no grids, be mobile friendly and so forth. It would be a start.