OPINION12 July 2010

6% of people will say anything!

Steve is looking at the small group of people who say silly things in any survey….

Just listening to a creative director friend of mine talking about ethics amoung consumers and mentioning that 9% of them claim they will pay more than 50% extra for ‘ethical’ products.

http://vimeo.com/12972226

I am sure some of them would but this number seems very high. It reminded me of the recent poll in Russia which suggested that 8% of Russians thought the country’s football team would win the World Cup, despite them not qualifying for the tournament!

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6603PG20100701

Having seen this small 5-8% of people saying some very strange things across many surveys over the years I think we should just accept that all surveys seem to have 5-8% of people who are effectively laughing at the survey. It reminds me of the great Calvin and Hobbes cartoon:

http://www.stat.psu.edu/old_resources/Cartoons/cartoon014.gif

So what should we do about these folks. In some ways they make the results a bit more interesting but clearly not more correct. So presumably we should have some sort of industry standard to always over recruit and then delete these folks, no idea how to do this but I am sure someone has?!

Steve Phillips

@RESEARCH LIVE

5 Comments

Christine

15 years ago

This the 8% who can recall the ad before it is aired... I don't think they are mischievous, but some people will answer questions (even stupid ones) just because they were asked. And then of course there is my 84 yo mother with altzheimers who always completes surveys......

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Anon

15 years ago

I've seen this anomaly as well, many times. As you see a decline in consumers agreeing with some statement by degree suddenly there's a blip upwards. I think these consumers just like to swim in a different path - words to define them - Mindless, Individual, Difficult, Gormless, Eccentric, Silly. I call them MIDGES. Small but annoying.

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Steve Phillips

15 years ago

Love the acronym, just done a piece of pricing research with an open price expectation question and got several people stating that their company would pay billions.....

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Jerry Raphael

15 years ago

Suppose in a survey 80% say they would start exercise from tomorrow, does it mean a sports company stack up products?? If you are not getting the results you desire, it doesn’t mean all of them are wrong. It just reflects what the respondent aspire to be. Ethical products example sited should be interpreted as a message rather than following the literal meaning. But agree they would be some funny guys among the so called outliers

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Steve Phillips

15 years ago

Good point but there are some Calvin's out there too!

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