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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? |
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There is no answer at this time. |
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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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