Telephone Surveys
Apr. 26th, 2005 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forsythSo, this telephone survey called and tried to ask me about... something. Some marketing thing. I was busy, and told them so. But afterward, after I'd finished crushing the Soviet Empire, I had a thought. How many other people turn down telephone surveys? Just offhand, I'd guess "a lot". I remember, back during the election, seeing that most telephone surveys had more than a 50% refuse rate. I don't remember the other specifics. So the "random" surveys aren't, they're self-selecting on who thinks it's worth answering the survey then. Which means surveys are a lot less accurate than the +/-3% or whatever they say they are.
Which is probably, on the whole, a not good thing. Oh, sure, lots of surveys are stupid, and for pointless marketing things, but most of the time, it's better for everybody for people to have accurate information. The way I see it, either people can decide they want to answer surveys, which isn't likely, or the people who make surveys can be more honest, and include what percentage of the people they called didn't answer, or maybe, y'know, not make the surveys suck and be annoying so people don't want to answer. I don't know if either would work, though.
On the other hand, I have the impulse to make up random stuff to add noise, but most surveys can cut that out. Man, I've changed, and I'm not sure if it's for the better. Think it's part of why my sense of humor doesn't seem to work sometimes either. I wonder what I can do to fix that. Of course, if surveys were only about important things, then I wouldn't want to lie. But even stupid marketing stuff is important, sort of, because it lets companies make things more effiecently, by not making crap people don't want. I dunno.
Tags: Mindscribbles, Me, Life, The Universe, and Everything
Which is probably, on the whole, a not good thing. Oh, sure, lots of surveys are stupid, and for pointless marketing things, but most of the time, it's better for everybody for people to have accurate information. The way I see it, either people can decide they want to answer surveys, which isn't likely, or the people who make surveys can be more honest, and include what percentage of the people they called didn't answer, or maybe, y'know, not make the surveys suck and be annoying so people don't want to answer. I don't know if either would work, though.
On the other hand, I have the impulse to make up random stuff to add noise, but most surveys can cut that out. Man, I've changed, and I'm not sure if it's for the better. Think it's part of why my sense of humor doesn't seem to work sometimes either. I wonder what I can do to fix that. Of course, if surveys were only about important things, then I wouldn't want to lie. But even stupid marketing stuff is important, sort of, because it lets companies make things more effiecently, by not making crap people don't want. I dunno.
Tags: Mindscribbles, Me, Life, The Universe, and Everything
