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Q: Marketing: Questionairre Help ( No Answer,   2 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Marketing: Questionairre Help
Category: Business and Money
Asked by: buddy80-ga
List Price: $10.00
Posted: 05 Dec 2004 11:29 PST
Expires: 04 Jan 2005 11:29 PST
Question ID: 438424
In 1939, two independent studies were conducted to find out the
American people?s opinion about whether the US was likely to be
involved in the Second World War.  The first study asked this
question: Do you think the US will go into the war before it?s over? 
The results were: 41% yes, 33% no, 26% don?t know.  The second study
asked this question: Do you think the US will succeed in staying out
of the war?  The results were as follows: 44% yes, 30% no, 26% don?t
know

a)	explain why the above studies yielded in consistent results
b)	what does this example tell us about how to design questionnaires?
Answer  
There is no answer at this time.

Comments  
Subject: Re: Marketing: Questionairre Help
From: probonopublico-ga on 05 Dec 2004 11:35 PST
 
Famously, some Market Opiniom polls were being rigged.

See Thomas Mahl's 'Desperate Deception', for example.
Subject: Re: Marketing: Questionairre Help
From: cornellian-ga on 05 Dec 2004 14:07 PST
 
No rigging necessary for results such as these.  There is a
well-documented tendency for people to demonstrate a "positive
response bias" or "confirmation bias" to questions such as these. 
That is, they hear a question and begin a cognitive search for
information that confirms the proposition.  You can almost always find
*some* evidence to support a proposition, so people who stop here in
the process tend to answer "yes."  (Hm, will we enter [stay out of]
the war?  Well, i can think of a couple of things that suggest we
will, so... "YES.")  And who is most likely to stop here in the
process?  Well, people who have other demands on their cognitive
processing ability at the time--e.g., people in the middle of dinner
who just got a call from an annoying interviewer and are anxious to
get off the phone.

One way to minimize the positive response bias is to phrase questions
in an open-ended manner, rather than as "yes/no" questions:  "What do
you believe will be America's position with regard to the war?  (a) we
probably will stay out of it, (b) we probably will enter it, (c)there
is an even chance of entering it and staying out of it.  Another thing
is to cut out evaluative terms like "succeed" (in staying out).  They
tend to elicit positive responses--Who doesn't want to succeed!

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