Not Enough Choices

Sometimes I wonder if I only write blog posts when I see egregious errors by other research firms…maybe it’s because it spurs me to action in my otherwise ordinary workdays.

Many of us researchers take surveys to keep up with trends and new ideas as well as learning what not to do when designing and fielding our own surveys.

My latest foray into survey-taking was a rather lengthy one about a local grocery store. Earlier in the survey I was asked where I buy groceries and I indicated not only did I shop at the stores listed, but I also happen to shop at a local chain…in fact I do a significant portion of my shopping at this local store.

But, when it came to allocating my proportion of grocery shopping across the stores, the survey designer failed to include my little local one…even though I had indicated I shopped there in an earlier question. This is what I saw when I tried to allocate my grocery shopping dollars:

As you can see, making matters worse, the survey folks expected answers to this question to total to 100%…kind of hard when you don’t have enough choices! Ugh.

I was very tempted to abandon the survey at this point as I’m sure other folks will who potentially find themselves in my dilemma.

So, tip for today, if you allow an “Other” choice earlier in a survey, make sure you account for that in any subsequent questions that use the same list of choices.

We all like having lots of choices…