Honest Answers vs Perfect Scores

All surveys suffer from one serious problem – the answers are not always an accurate reflection of the individual’s belief. When you do research, you do everything you can to stress that you want honest answers. Indeed, your absolute hope is that you get as close to a perfectly accurate response as possible, because any inaccuracy can lead to problems with your data, and ultimately your analysis. But the more you stress honesty with your responses, the more you may end up suffering from another problem – the lack of willingness to give certain answers when honesty is encouraged.

The issue here is something we’ve already discussed several times of late – Central Tendency Bias. The unwillingness of people to choose an extreme answer (very satisfied, very unsatisfied, etc.) when provided with a choice of data. People are always under the opinion that giving out perfect scores (or the closest to perfect on a scale) is not giving out an accurate grade, because there is always a scenario where it could be better.

It is for that reason that, logically, stressing honesty in your survey may decrease the frequency that you receive extreme answers, because respondents that take the time to think about whether or not they are being honest with their answers are almost always going to think “it could be better” and not give the extreme answer. This would cause their answer to blend with those whose honest answer is not the extreme answer, since they are unlikely to change their opinion after critical thinking.

On the other hand, someone that is acting more on their gut without trying to give an honest answer may see something and immediately choose the extreme answer, because that’s what their emotions are telling them to select. In a way, a lack of stressing honesty would cause what could perhaps be the “correct” answer based on their feelings – selecting the extreme answer.

Of course, it doesn’t make sense for a survey to not ask for honest answers. Encouraging honesty is the only way to get results. You want people to think about their answer, not simply answer as quickly as possible based on whatever they feel like after reading the question.

Unfortunately, there is no easy solution for either. Some ideas for how to reduce this problem will be discussed in the next article.