Who are the experts, respondents or researchers?

An increasing amount of research, such as that by Pete Comley and Dutch NOVPO study, show that many respondents are doing one or more surveys a week. At 50 surveys a year these panel members see more questionnaires than most market researchers or research buyers – no wonder they are becoming more savvy!

Researchers need to understand, in transactional analysis terms, they are moving away from the parent<>child model towards an adult<>adult model. One example of this is shown by the reaction to questions about buying behaviour. In many surveys there is a question such as ‘Which of the following to have bank accounts with?’, ‘Which are the following do you buy regularly?’, and ‘Which of these ads did you see in the last 7 days?’. Researchers have reported that respondents, particularly those who do more surveys, seem to be recalling fewer services, brands, and advertisements.

The most frequently suggested reason for respondents saying they recall fewer brands is that they know that for every product, service, or advert they pick they will be routed in a loop of tedious questions. Respondents are helpful, so they own up to a few, but they are not stupid, they are not going to list all the items, and risk a long list of loops.

The Research 2.0 solution is straight forward. Introduce the recall question in the following way “Please tell us which of the following commercials you have seen in the last seven days. After you have answered this question we would like to you to answer some more detailed questions about two of them”.

Comments

[Olivier]

Brilliant idea - thanks for sharing. I will try to enforce that internally ASAP.