Bad Research

[azurelunatic]

The Dove Foundation or someone representing them called me at the end of writing group, wanting to do a survey. The survey was one question: do you agree or disagree with this statement? The statement:

a) Ratings are growing more lax;
b) Children's media is growing more "edgy";
c) I'm concerned that parents and grandparents cannot do anything about this but monitor the child's TV/media watching.


...what. the. fuck. I said that I did not understand the question. It was broken down for me again. I wanted to know if I was speaking with an IVR, because the person or thing sounded exactly like the Qwest IVR. I said it was bad research. I wanted to know what they meant by "family". I wanted to speak to a fucking human. I got hung up on. I'm going to call tomorrow and give them a piece of my professional mind.

Never mind that I do think that a lot of the programming is bad. I don't like the way they're conducting their research.

Comments

[wibbble]

As someone who works in the same industry, they probably wouldn't be allowed to use your answers anyway.

[azurelunatic]

This is only true for surveys with that sort of security screening question.

This nutcracked group does not have that. Nor, evidently, any sort of level of survey design professionalism.

[nalidoll.livejournal.com]

Okay... I have to ask, because my brain wouldn't come up with anything for it on its own...

What is an IVR?

[azurelunatic]

Interactive Voice Responder. The talking computers that make a call in to a Big Business absolute hell because they expect you to talk back. Worse than a push-button phone menu.

[nalidoll.livejournal.com]

Ah! I knew *what* it was meant to be, but could not for the life of me place the letters to and actual *term*.

It was a blank on the word "interactive" that was throwing me. Yay for random holes appearing in my internal thesaurus. (Or not.)

I hate those thing. I dislike computers talking to me over the phone in general. I hang up on them, given even a wee bit of a choice in the matter. The fact that computers now call and tell me to call them back to take care of business sends me through the roof. This is not good business practice, no matter what research said it would save in man-hours.

I have found that if you randomly answer in a couple different languages, it will sometimes confuse the computer enough to kick your call to a live operator, even when the usual voice command to do so doesn't work.
Randomly answering in a couple different languages during the same call when talking to a human often just causes their heads to explode. This is handy on annoying repeat calls where they keep missing the fact that you said no and you want your name removed from all their lists. Heh.

[azurelunatic]

Languagegeekery is useful. hcolleen is poking bits of Japanese into my brain. So far I've managed to hang on to "doku" as "where". Not much else.

[nalidoll.livejournal.com]

Random latin can be handy, and amusing. "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" is one of my favorites to randomly interject when I can. Anything Welsh pretty much automatically fries the circuits of either computer or human brain when used suddenly and without warning - but attempting welsh pronunciations without a spotter is not recommended for beginners. Scots and Irish Gaelic can be tricky, but they - at least - do have obvious vowels.

J has someone teaching him smatterings of Cantonese at work. I am sure I will find this useful at some point.

[azurelunatic]

"Clause eos!" is far better to say at work than "Shut the fuck up."

[nalidoll.livejournal.com]

"hud yer wheesht" tends to come out of my mouth in those instances.

[azurelunatic]

These days I am getting mileage out of the Tight-Lipped Professional Smile and the Cold Stare.

[wibbble]

Sadly, that wouldn't be appropriate in my workplace.

[hcolleen.livejournal.com]

You should also know that "nani" is what and "koko" is here...

More usefulness..."Ima, nani o shite imasu ka?" Now what are you doing?

"Paatii o shimasu" literally...do a party

"kisama" bastard, asshole, and other rudeness...depending on the translator

"teme" rude form of "you"

"shimatta" damn it! or fuck...depending again on your translator

"saru" monkey ;)

[azurelunatic]

Things have trouble sticking in my brain unless I can find some hook for them, sometimes. So it'll take some pounding before I remember any of that...

[wibbble]

The term IVR's used for push-button phone menus too.

[azurelunatic]

Useful to know.

[azurelunatic]

Submitted via their web form:

Your survey design is very poor. I got called with a "one question" survey which featured a question with three or four distinct parts to it. The question was in the form of a statement that I was supposed to agree or disagree with.

My job happens to be in telephone survey administration, supervision, and troubleshooting. Your survey is spun to get the results you want. It is in no way designed to get accurate results.

For the record:

I agree that ratings let things pass now that would not have passed even ten years ago.
I do not know what children's programming today is doing.
I feel that a parent, grandparent, or guardian monitoring the television watching of a child is more than sufficient.
I do not think that your narrow definition of "family" is at all appropriate.

No contact info given.

[crystalrowan.livejournal.com]

Qwest - interestingly enough my client does the H&W outsourcing for Qwest (including the benefits IVR) so I suddenly had some kind of weird knee-jerk work reaction when I read those words.

[azurelunatic]

Would you happen to know if there's a magic command that makes the Qwest Customer Service IVR cough up a push-button menu from the get-go? I hate that thing with a passion, and feel exceptionally nostalgic for the push-button menu.