Survey Goggles

Google recently announced the beta test of a new email feature called Mail Goggles. Basically it is a user enacted feature that helps prevent you from sending an email that you may regret later. It is specifically intended for late night emails, when a person may have had a bit too much to drink (or some other form of ingested recreation) to think rationally about what they may write to someone. After all, how many people have made the bad judgment to send a hateful email to an ex-boss or ex boyfriend/girlfriend? Mail Goggles requires you to take a simple math test. If you can’t correctly answer the questions within the allotted amount of time, your email “send” is disabled.

This got me to thinking whether we need a similar tool for survey takers. After all, with online surveys, an individual can take a survey 24/7. So I decided to scan the responses to surveys that are taken in the wee hours of the night. Admittedly this was somewhat unscientific. I didn’t know if a response at 3:00 AM was from a person who had been partying all night, or if it was a person getting home from working the second shift. I checked for logically consistent answers. I also checked that open-ended responses were relatively clear and spelling errors were minimal.

Bottom line, I didn’t see anything that made me think we should question the validity of late night surveys. Also, I didn’t find many surveys that are completed in the wee hours of the morning. So, I don’t think we need survey goggles. But this is one of the many things you have to think about with an online survey. One of the many things that did not exist with telephone surveys.

Give Chickens More Rights!

First, my apologies for dropping out of the blog for the past few weeks. We are in that typically crazy fall crunch that is common for marketing research.

Besides being busy with research, a lot has happened in the last few weeks. Most notably the elections. As a researcher, it is always exciting to watch the elections. After all, the returns are like the results of another survey. A very important one that impacts our lives, but it is still a survey or poll. I say this because we do not have a 100% census vote. Therefore results are subject to the same sampling issues as surveys. Except in this case, the citizens self-select on whether they will vote. Therefore, biases are introduced. Much has been written about the impact on results based on who votes. For example, older voters will still show up on a rainy day, while younger voters are less likely to show up when it rains. So it’s not perfect, but unless we force a census vote, it is the best we can do. And the more people who do vote, the less bias.

Now on to California. By now you probably know that Proposition 8, which eliminates the rights of a group of citizens, passed. This proposition writes discrimination into the California state constitution. On the same day, the citizens of California voted to expand the rights of chickens and other livestock. What’s wrong with this picture? I for one am ashamed of my fellow Californians.