• doom (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    Ah ha, so if someone doesn't pay attention and checks 10 instead of 6, they know they aren't reading the survey and can easily discount their opinion.
    But it doesn't catch ppl like me who just puts a 6 all the way down the line.
  • (cs)

    Whats wrong with the first one? (and I've filled out the same Home Depot survey many a time, its always there). There's nothing wrong with making an attempt to get meaningful survey data - this prevents the user from just clicking all 5 or 6 or whatever all the way down the page.

  • (cs) in reply to anonymous
    anonymous:
    So that first picture is a WTF because of the "quality assurance" question? Or am I missing something else?

    Full disclosure: I work in Marketing Research

    Is that so? Well, can you tell your management to stop committing fraud by using "pre-qualification" surveys that ask about 20-25 questions before claiming that you don't "qualify" and giving the survey-taker nothing in return? We're talking some very useful demographic data here. If you get to ask 20-25 questions for free, why bother ever "qualifying" anyone?

    I no longer take any online surveys because this has happened too many times.

  • (cs) in reply to misha
    misha:
    Chucara:
    Simple CAPTCHA maybe, but I think it is more likely that it is to try to detect which users just slams in a random number to get on with the survey. Hence the quality control remark.

    That's not really a WTF in my opinion.

    Except that if I took that survey, I'd almost certainly not pick 6 out of sheer contrariness. Am I the only one?

    I dunno bout you, but for a chance to win a $10,000 Cdn Home Depot gift card (that would be $10,147.50 for you Americans :), I always answer the whole thing (including the ever present "pick this number" captcha question.

  • AdT (unregistered) in reply to Erik
    Erik:
    So, even though I am a perfectly legitimate survey user who probably has valid opinions, I may click something other than 6 just because I have a subconscious need to subvert authority whenever necessary, or even just to see what happens.

    As you can see, it works in two ways: It filters out most of the results entered by random clickers, and the supposed opinions of the socially immature. A simple and effective way to reduce noise levels by about 90% is anything but a WTF.

  • (cs) in reply to Andrei
    Andrei:
    The one about the customer service is a classic psychological trick. When I took a test for the army, they gave me a similar thing. Another trick is to ask the same questions but in other form, to see if the responses coincide.

    Do you require exactly the same answer? The whole "greatly agree" or "somewhat agree" line is pretty fuzzy, and I'm sure some people will change their mind about it if given a second chance.

  • (cs) in reply to Michael
    Michael:
    I can authoritatively say that even if you _did_ kick the surveyor in the nads, we would still take your answers. At minimum wage, nobody really cares what happens to the surveyor, your one response earns the company more than their entire day's pay.

    I once answered a "short" phone survey that ended up taking much longer than I expected, with every question including the instructions "A for Greatly Agree, B for Somewhat agree..." Eventually I got frustrated and just started saying C nonstop, even while the surveyer was reading the questions. She didn't care, and just kept taking my answers even though it was obvious I was no longer participating.

  • (cs)

    The 4th question seems like a perfectly sensible sanity check to me.

  • Pete (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    Ah ha, so if someone doesn't pay attention and checks 10 instead of 6, they know they aren't reading the survey and can easily discount their opinion.

    I like that.

    I think it says something very interesting about the way market research is conducted that we are searching for a way to ignore the input of people like that rather than trying to find someting better than a radio control to do surveys with.

  • Lynx (unregistered)

    Personally, I think the WTF on the survey is that it's a 10-point scale rather than the more traditional 5-point or even 7-point scale. Having done some research work using survey methodology, I think the convention for survey is (1) no even numbers and (2) keep the number of options per question as small as possible. 5 is nice, 7 is better, but any more is really just asking for trouble.

    10 possible choices in each question in theory would give more granuality, but it also confuses the person taking the survey. As in "Oh, I moderately think the service guy is nice, so is that a 6, 7 or 8?"

    Also, I think whoever or whatever crunches the data later would end up reducing the groupings, so confusing the survey-taker is just a waste of time..

  • (cs) in reply to Bobble
    Bobble:
    Erik:
    If I'm on a website taking something as meaningless (to me) as a customer satisfaction survey, and I see a question telling me to pick a certain option, the temptation to pick any option other than that one is just too great to resist. So, even though I am a perfectly legitimate survey user who probably has valid opinions, I may click something other than 6 just because I have a subconscious need to subvert authority whenever necessary, or even just to see what happens.

    You are not a legitimate survey user as you believe customer satisfaction surveys are meaningless. Your desire to click something other than six is at least anecdotal proof that that is not at all a WTF and serves a very useful purpose in weeding out, well, people like you.

    Why should a customer satisfaction survey be meaningless to you? If you report that the employees were great but that the store was dirty, (or conversely, that the store was clean but the employees were rude), and other people said the same thing about the same store, don't you think a good store manager or store owner or corporate owner would do something about that? Like get the problems fixed? Wouldn't that be meaningful to you?

    I absolutely agree that your answers should be discounted if you check something other than six out of obstinance.

    Personally, I take the Jack in the Box and Home Depot surveys when I am randomly selected to have the access code printed on my receipt. Home Depot gives random $5000 store gift certificates to those who take the surveys, and Jack in the Box gives out similar incentives.

    I answer the questions honestly: Home Depot often has employees chatting with each other rather than helping customers; items are often out of stock; prices are usually good; the store is well organized; etc. Lowe's Hardware, on the other hand, universally seems to have friendly, helpful employees.

    On the other hand, when Radio Shack used to ask me for my phone number, I politely refused. They don't need it.

    [Digression: I had a Jack in the Box manager call me once due to something I wrote in an online survey. I haven't seen the idiots who were working that day ever again. I wasn't trying to get anyone fired, I just reported that two employees were being rude and snarky, after they were playing catch in the middle of the drive-up lane with garbage. When I asked the employees' names, they wouldn't tell me. This was at a drive-up, and they didn't have name tags on, so I couldn't get their names. The manager already knew the time of day that I was there from the code on the survey, so he knew who was working the drive-through, and he probably got similar reports from other customers.]

  • (cs) in reply to doom
    doom:
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    Ah ha, so if someone doesn't pay attention and checks 10 instead of 6, they know they aren't reading the survey and can easily discount their opinion.
    But it doesn't catch ppl like me who just puts a 6 all the way down the line.

    Duh. Sometimes the survey asks you to put a 2 as the answer to this question. You might be right randomly though.

  • Doug (unregistered) in reply to Tony
    Tony:
    Quality control question is very smart, fair cop.

    I actually filled out this survey. Saw that question and thought it was smart to eliminate the people that just check randomly or systematically (8,9,10 to avoid giving all 10s). Of course it would be alot better if this question was randomly inserted, sometimes in the first row, sometimes in the last.

  • Goats (unregistered)

    The first one is definitely not a WTF. I occasionally take these surveys for extra cash when I'm bored, and most of them have that. As others have already said, it's to make sure people aren't just randomly clicking through the survey results, or writing a program to answer surveys to get money.

  • Wait, maybe that was TV (unregistered) in reply to Synonymous Awkward
    Synonymous Awkward:
    Vechni:
    Hence, because you want to (rather, can only) market to people who follow orders.
    Instructions, not orders. Try not to turn it into a soapbox where you can proclaim what a beautiful and unique snowflake you are, or your unswerving belief in anarchism, or whatever the current popular way is to describe that sort of thing.

    The last time I saw someone try to split that particular hair with his colleagues, they kicked his ass out of the office. Unanimously.

  • Beau "Porpus" Wilkinson (unregistered) in reply to tezoatlipoca
    tezoatlipoca:
    I dunno bout you, but for a chance to win a $10,000 Cdn Home Depot gift card (that would be $10,147.50 for you Americans :), I always answer the whole thing (including the ever present "pick this number" captcha question.

    The Canadian Dollar is worth more than the US Dollar?? That is an "OMGWTF." That should be a wake-up call for G.W. Bush, kinda like when a fat girl starts breaking chairs. Time to lay off the junk food...

    I don't mean to imply anything bad about Canada, it's just that we've passed a real milestone in terms of inflation.

  • el jaybird (unregistered) in reply to Beau "Porpus" Wilkinson
    Beau "Porpus" Wilkinson:
    The Canadian Dollar is worth more than the US Dollar?? That is an "OMGWTF."

    Yep, we hit par a week or two ago and we're hovering at $1.02 right now.

    Makes me want to drive south to do some shopping.

  • notabot (unregistered) in reply to Andrei
    Andrei:
    The one about the customer service is a classic psychological trick. When I took a test for the army, they gave me a similar thing. Another trick is to ask the same questions but in other form, to see if the responses coincide.
    Not really accurate way of doing things, i've seen quite a few places do this on applications, and the rewording often changes the meaning of the question or puts spin on it.
  • Sgt. Preston (unregistered) in reply to Beau "Porpus" Wilkinson
    Beau "Porpus" Wilkinson:
    The Canadian Dollar is worth more than the US Dollar?? That is an "OMGWTF." That should be a wake-up call for G.W. Bush, kinda like when a fat girl starts breaking chairs. Time to lay off the junk food...

    I don't mean to imply anything bad about Canada, it's just that we've passed a real milestone in terms of inflation.

    Yes, a major factor in the rapid rise of the loonie relative to the green back this year has been the fact that Canada is a net oil exporter and the US is a net oil importer. There's also the fact that the Canadian government's economic management and the Bank of Canada's monetary management have been, by and large (and with a couple of scandalous exceptions), fairly competent for the last decade or so while the US government has been bleeding money at an alarming rate to fund the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Canada's been paying down its public debt while the US has been adding to its. The loonie has made much more modest gains against the Euro.
  • (cs)

    I'm sure that several people will make sure to let me know that this is immature, will get me disqualified, and is exactly the point of having the question, and so on and so forth, but... my instinct on seeing this would be to answer 6 for every question except the 4th.

    If it's a machine doing the filtering then I suppose it would just get discarded, but any human looking at it would know that I had to have read the question.

  • Andrew (unregistered) in reply to anonymous
    anonymous:
    So that first picture is a WTF because of the "quality assurance" question? Or am I missing something else?

    Full disclosure: I work in Marketing Research

    Bots are a problem, but at my company we haven’t yet seen evidence that they’re a big problem. The real problem is that there are people who commission 90+ minute studies, and actually expect the data they get back to be meaningful.

    But the Real WTF is that in general there people exist who take these surveys "professionally" creating the need to add things like that to ensure that the data isn't just some guy clicking randomly in order to get a free sample.

    Yes, I have seen people take the same online survey 7+ times to get a free shampoo sample. At least that's the current record recognized from inputting the exact same address, for all we know someone else might be higher but was smart enough to alter their address a little each time.

    I've taken the online casual dining surveys. There's one entry code per receipt so nobody enters N times. They offer a lottery of $5,000 or more, so the payoff is worth it.

    I've also done the movie focus groups once. That was a horrible experience.

  • nobody (unregistered) in reply to Fuji
    Fuji:
    Corporate Cog:
    Hope depot? Therein lies the problem. Derive your hope not in retail outlets.

    When you go there, you "hope" what you want is in stock.

    Actually, it probably is in stock; you hope you will find someone who can help you figure out where they put it.

  • (cs) in reply to poochner

    I once got a bit of shareware which had the usual long-ass EULA. And like often happens it wouldn't let you check 'I agree' until you scrolled all the way down.

    So I scroll down and click it, and this dialog pops up saying, "You just read that entire EULA in 1.76 seconds. Are you sure you want to check 'I agree'?"

    That was pretty cool.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    If you won't even pick 6 on the quality control answer, then chances are you didn't spend any time at all on the other questions, or you did, then you felt the "irresistable urge" to choose one that's not what you decided.

    Do you have a family history of mental illness?

    It's called "puberty" and occurs in even the best families.

  • AdT (unregistered)
    Beau "Porpus" Wilkinson:
    The Canadian Dollar is worth more than the US Dollar?? That is an "OMGWTF."

    I know this is cruel...

    This OMGWTF³ was brought to you by Yahoo! Finance and the brillant Georgie bean.

  • (cs) in reply to brazzy
    brazzy:
    Anonymous:
    If you won't even pick 6 on the quality control answer, then chances are you didn't spend any time at all on the other questions, or you did, then you felt the "irresistable urge" to choose one that's not what you decided.

    Do you have a family history of mental illness?

    It's called "puberty" and occurs in even the best families.

    Unfortunately it seems that puberty extends well into the thirties these days. At least when you are talking about a bunch of internet forum users trying to be 'non-conformist' and 'kewl'.

  • (cs) in reply to misha
    misha:
    Except that if I took that survey, I'd almost certainly *not* pick 6 out of sheer contrariness. Am I the only one?...

    Yes; and they don't want your answers because you're likely to answer them all contrarily.

    But for most of us who refuse to obey random orders, the likelihood of participating in the survey in the first place is near zero anyway.

  • (cs) in reply to PeriSoft
    PeriSoft:
    I once got a bit of shareware which had the usual long-ass EULA. And like often happens it wouldn't let you check 'I agree' until you scrolled all the way down.

    So I scroll down and click it, and this dialog pops up saying, "You just read that entire EULA in 1.76 seconds. Are you sure you want to check 'I agree'?"

    That was pretty cool.

    Compared to the average crap one sees, yes.

    But this is one of those things that's cool once, and a pain in the ass forever more. It won't be long now before they enforce a 5 minute reading period, or force you to watch a movie, and pass a quiz.

    However, Firefox has had countdown timers on its software installation confirm boxes for a while now, i.e. the OK button is grayed for about 5 seconds.

  • jimi (unregistered) in reply to AdT
    AdT:
    Beau "Porpus" Wilkinson:
    The Canadian Dollar is worth more than the US Dollar?? That is an "OMGWTF."

    I know this is cruel...

    This OMGWTF³ was brought to you by Yahoo! Finance and the brillant Georgie bean.

    They are going to have to reprint a LOT of book covers now...

  • charlie (unregistered) in reply to gabba

    No, it's just to prove that the person is reading the survey/taking it seriously. Not just responding randomly.

  • el jaybird (unregistered) in reply to charlie
    charlie:
    No, it's just to prove that the person is reading the survey/taking it seriously. Not just responding randomly.

    Better late than never, eh?

  • Chris (unregistered)

    This Home Depot question reminds me of a drug survey I took in high school. There were sections for each drug (pot, lsd, heroin, etc.) and questions like if you'd tried it, how often you used it in the past month, etc.

    All well and good, except for one of the drugs: Wagon Wheels.

    After the survey was done, everyone in unison: "WTF are wagon wheels?!" We eventually figured out that it was a similar QA question. They wanted to exclude the people who just went down the list, "Came to classed stoned, check. Oh yeah, shooting up heroin at this moment. Check."

    We still thought it was funny and people were exchanging suspicious little baggies of wagon wheel shaped pasta for the next few days.

  • Not me (unregistered) in reply to el jaybird
    el jaybird:
    Beau "Porpus" Wilkinson:
    The Canadian Dollar is worth more than the US Dollar?? That is an "OMGWTF."

    Yep, we hit par a week or two ago and we're hovering at $1.02 right now.

    Makes me want to drive south to do some shopping.

    Now that's a lie, claiming to want to drive south if you live in Canada :o :D

  • Sarni (unregistered) in reply to misha
    misha:
    Nope, because anything I build falls to pieces at once, usually with near fatal consequences.

    I do see the attraction of DIY itself, I just don't believe it can be fun to shop for bits of wood and nails and stuff.

    I pity you. Good DIY shops are like Toys-R-US shops, only for the initiated adults.

  • (cs) in reply to Beau "Porpus" Wilkinson
    Beau "Porpus" Wilkinson:
    tezoatlipoca:
    I dunno bout you, but for a chance to win a $10,000 Cdn Home Depot gift card (that would be $10,147.50 for you Americans :), I always answer the whole thing (including the ever present "pick this number" captcha question.

    The Canadian Dollar is worth more than the US Dollar?? That is an "OMGWTF." That should be a wake-up call for G.W. Bush, kinda like when a fat girl starts breaking chairs. Time to lay off the junk food...

    I don't mean to imply anything bad about Canada, it's just that we've passed a real milestone in terms of inflation.

    Er, that would be "exchange rate," or "budget deficit," or "trade deficit." Or even "Sub-prime Financial Shenanigans."

    What it would not be is inflation.

    Personally, I think it would be good if the Bush administration actively encouraged the consumption of junk food. I mean, crappy restaurants (and Web 2.0) are about all that's keeping the economy going, right now. And think of the financial windfall for the health industry ...

  • Badger (unregistered) in reply to PeriSoft
    PeriSoft:
    I once got a bit of shareware which had the usual long-ass EULA. And like often happens it wouldn't let you check 'I agree' until you scrolled all the way down.
    Those long-ass EULAs have always puzzled me. You simply can't read them. They are the equivalent of about 50 pages of lawyerly text. They are too long to read, and even if you try, the dense legal jargon makes no sense to the average person. So every time I buy a game or install an app, I lie. As does everyone else. Are they enforceable?

    A really bad example is the World of Warcraft Eula. Incredibly long, and it makes you 'read' it again for even the smallest patch. Does it change? Who knows?

  • dkf (unregistered) in reply to Chris
    Chris:
    All well and good, except for one of the drugs: Wagon Wheels.
    Wagon Wheels: Just Say No.
  • Jupp3 (unregistered)

    If that "no, yes, no" question is answered on paper, then it might make sense.

    IF you answer "no", and later notice that "yes" is more likely the right answer, then you can check "yes" and leave upper "no" as it is. If you first answered "yes" and want to change to "no", just check the lower "no" - in other words, the lowest choice counts.

    I have once filled one paper, where there were 3 choices (third being "change entered answer to the other") - this could be one way to achieve the same.

  • (cs)

    Someone already submitted my comment... but now I am sad because I havent said anything in a long time. Smart move for Home Depot on that one =).

  • Jon W (unregistered)

    I've gotten the Home Depot question, too. I think it's brillant! If you only count responses which click the right number, you only get people who read directions, thus skewing towards people with too much time on their hands :-)

  • (cs) in reply to sas
    sas:
    However, Firefox has had countdown timers on its software installation confirm boxes for a while now, i.e. the OK button is grayed for about 5 seconds.
    I actually like that. It probably wouldn't prevent stupidly installing things, but it can prevent some malicious forms of attack. For instance, a link in some site that's directly underneath where the "Install" button would be, and mouse-overing the link attempts to install something. You would try and click the link, but instead install some crapware.

    I always wonder why my mobile phone (and most others) doesn't have such a feature. I don't want to have someone call me as I'm navigating the menu and accidentally hang up or accept the call.

  • chronos (unregistered) in reply to Sgt. Preston
    Sgt. Preston:
    Beau "Porpus" Wilkinson:
    The Canadian Dollar is worth more than the US Dollar?? That is an "OMGWTF." That should be a wake-up call for G.W. Bush, kinda like when a fat girl starts breaking chairs. Time to lay off the junk food...

    I don't mean to imply anything bad about Canada, it's just that we've passed a real milestone in terms of inflation.

    Yes, a major factor in the rapid rise of the loonie relative to the green back this year has been the fact that Canada is a net oil exporter and the US is a net oil importer. There's also the fact that the Canadian government's economic management and the Bank of Canada's monetary management have been, by and large (and with a couple of scandalous exceptions), fairly competent for the last decade or so while the US government has been bleeding money at an alarming rate to fund the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Canada's been paying down its public debt while the US has been adding to its. The loonie has made much more modest gains against the Euro.

    No, the biggest problem is the illegal aliens on the public dole. And don't tell me that they are just doing jobs that citizens don't want, or some other bullshit. And NO, they do not contribute to our economy - the number one source of foreign currency in Mexico is the cash sent by wetbacks back in to the country - to the tune of US$17 BILLION or more per year. If we weren't supporting the illegals, the war would be chump change...

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    I'm shocked by the amount of posters who didn't know about control questions. They are rather common.

  • AdT (unregistered) in reply to chronos
    chronos:
    No, the biggest problem is the illegal aliens on the public dole. And don't tell me that they are just doing jobs that citizens don't want, or some other bullshit. And NO, they do not contribute to our economy - the number one source of foreign currency in Mexico is the cash sent by wetbacks back in to the country - to the tune of US$17 BILLION or more per year. If we weren't supporting the illegals, the war would be chump change...

    Mexico? I thought it was the jews who ruin the economy. Oh wait, wrong country, wrong decade. Never mind.

  • Hill (unregistered) in reply to DWalker59
    DWalker59:

    [Digression: I had a Jack in the Box manager call me once due to something I wrote in an online survey. I haven't seen the idiots who were working that day ever again. I wasn't trying to get anyone fired, I just reported that two employees were being rude and snarky, after they were playing catch in the middle of the drive-up lane with garbage. When I asked the employees' names, they wouldn't tell me. This was at a drive-up, and they didn't have name tags on, so I couldn't get their names. The manager already knew the time of day that I was there from the code on the survey, so he knew who was working the drive-through, and he probably got similar reports from other customers.]

    Dude. Eating at Jack in the Box is creepy. Driving-in to Jack in the Box is creepy. Surveying Jack in the Box's quality is creepy. Getting two fully-clothed boneheads who work at Jack in the Box fired is creepy.

    Creepy creepy creepy. 6

  • (cs) in reply to Andrei

    Edited to say: A degree in Computer Science and 10 years in the industry and I can't figure out how Community Server Forums work in quoting. What does that say about me? Don't answer that. I just can't get the quote thing to work.

    The one about the customer service is a classic psychological trick. When I took a test for the army, they gave me a similar thing. Another trick is to ask the same questions but in other form, to see if the responses coincide.

    Asking the same question different ways is a technique used in pschometric testing - which itself can be a very successful way of identifying personality traits, though I resent them being used in an employment situation. (My knowledge of their success is mainly for Court/Legal/Probation Professionals use)

    I was hunting around for WTFery in that first one, too. A good idea. You don't want bots or people who subvert authority to distort your results.

  • (cs) in reply to tezoatlipoca
    tezoatlipoca:
    I dunno bout you, but for a chance to win a $10,000 Cdn Home Depot gift card (that would be $10,147.50 for you Americans :), I always answer the whole thing (including the ever present "pick this number" captcha question.

    What? Just a meager €6669,34? (In case your font can't handle it, that's a euro sign).

  • UK_Aspie (unregistered)

    On the ICL 2900 mainframes (Ok, so I'm old) there was an option on line printers for "Line Formatting". Valid entries were "Yes", "No", and "Fortran".

  • csrster (unregistered) in reply to misha
    misha:
    Chucara:
    Simple CAPTCHA maybe, but I think it is more likely that it is to try to detect which users just slams in a random number to get on with the survey. Hence the quality control remark.

    That's not really a WTF in my opinion.

    Except that if I took that survey, I'd almost certainly not pick 6 out of sheer contrariness. Am I the only one?

    I think the bigger WTF though is the idea that anyone thinks shopping for DIY stuff could ever be "fun".

    What are you, a chick? What could be more fun than hanging out in a hardware store admiring the power tools?

  • Neomojo (unregistered) in reply to csrster
    csrster:
    misha:
    Chucara:
    Simple CAPTCHA maybe, but I think it is more likely that it is to try to detect which users just slams in a random number to get on with the survey. Hence the quality control remark.

    That's not really a WTF in my opinion.

    Except that if I took that survey, I'd almost certainly not pick 6 out of sheer contrariness. Am I the only one?

    I think the bigger WTF though is the idea that anyone thinks shopping for DIY stuff could ever be "fun".

    What are you, a chick? What could be more fun than hanging out in a hardware store admiring the power tools?

    This is a computer geek forum, so for future reference, we get our kicks by trying to prove who has the bigger e-penis.

    Power tools are for shop geeks.

Leave a comment on “No, Yes, or No?”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article