Explaining Surveys to an 8-Year Old
Posted by Mary Boozel on Thu, Jan 13, 2011
Last week I had to go to the DMV and took my 8-year old son along. Finishing far earlier than expected, we went out to lunch. As we were waiting for our food, he spotted a survey on the table. He started to read over it as I fished a pen from my purse. I rarely fill out these types of surveys, as I'm usually too busy wrangling three kids.
I made an exception because it was just he and I, we had the time and I wanted him to know what Mommy does. Daddy is a pilot - a self-explanatory job in a single word. I can't explain to half my adult friends what it is that I do, let alone to my son!
The first question was about the quality of the service - after I explained what quality is, he read over the responses – “excellent, good, fair and poor”. My survey background kicked in and I started to explain that it was a scale, but I didn't like that it only had four options (I know Jeffrey prefers the scale “Very Poor, Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent”). The second, third and fourth questions used the same scale and were on the food, cleanliness and overall satisfaction. They had an open-ended question and a data block for my contact info.
Overall, not a bad survey – it made efficient use of the space, was readily available and easy to take. I wrote in response to the open-ended question that I would have preferred an online survey. We found the collection box and dropped it in on our way out.
Then came the good discussion with my son - all the “whys?”
- “Why do they want to know?”
- Good question - why do they want to know? I assume that it’s because they want to measure their customer's satisfaction and see where they can improve.
- Or do they think they have to? Is it just assumed they need to collect this data? How are they going to act on it?
- “Why would do you want it to be online, mom?”
- That goes back to the first question - what are they going to do with this data? Does the manager open the box each day and update a spreadsheet and increment the tally of fairs/goods/excellents? Do they read the open-ended text questions (assuming the handwriting is legible)?
- Do they send aggregate data back to HQ to see where they rank in their region and overall? How secure is the data? Are poor surveys acted on and included in the overall ratings or thrown out because HQ says we have to have a satisfaction number of X? Do they mail all the cards somewhere and some human manually does all of this for each location? If I left a comment on 12/30/10, how long until someone read it or acted on it?
Turns out I had even more questions than my son! As I explained to him, the best way to do better is to ask questions. Never stop being curious – whether that applies to how lift keeps an airplane in the sky or what keep your customers coming back to you for lunch.