(Interesting Ian Alert: An Anecodote Is Not Proof. The Plural Of Anecdotes Is Not Data)
I can recall one time where the company I was with opened up it's clients and staff to one of these Personality Test companies, to beta test their latest form. It was a paid session, £10 for the completed forms. You are going to get £10. No matter how long you take filling out those forms. What do you think we did?
And do you think that company ever knew we all just randomly ticked boxes without even reading the questions?
Probably. Of course, they probably didn't care either. No matter what we ticked, some psycho-babble explanation for it could be attached to explain the results; the desirability of such tests for the producing company is that you believe what the test is supposedly telling you, and that you thus buy their tests. Not in fact that the people who produce the tests actually know or believe in the accuracy of the data they collect. They didn't even stick around to ask us what we thought of the test itself... perhaps they weren't even beta testing it, and were just using us as a captive sample to increase the "As tested on a sample of X people so far" figure for release date... and in the meantime, they have seeded the idea amongst many people that these tests are indeed tried out on ordinary joes; "I hear these tests are completely made up...", "Not true, I hear they tested them at so and so a company..."
You know, I also occasionally stop and talk to market researchers on the street when I see they have the clipboards with advertisment images... just to insert anomalies into their data. Doing this one time I came across a similar lack of concern for data collection;
"Which of these images makes you feel hungriest"
*looks at the absolute worst*
"That one".
"And which of these descriptions of Mars Bars would you say is the most accurate: Yummy, Tasty, Fun, Desirable, Exciting?"
That's a genuine one I've seen, although the actual terms were something different, every one was indeed positive... you won't really believe any of them, and they won't be looking at any answer you give: That part of the questionaire isn't about tracking advertising trends at all, but is in fact a subtle advert itself. The goal is to make you personally think of those words in association with Mars Bars at that moment. So I said;
"I am offended that you do not offer any choice to say Mars Bars are terrible, or I am allergic to their contents. I thus think Mars Bars are dictatorial and awful."
In the hopes that this would get fed back to HQ and they'd think "This kind of advertising doesn't work". Sadly, it does work, which is why they do it... indeed, the lady I saw probably wasn't even a Mars employee, but was employed by a third party Marketing Agency; Who then says to Mars "Look, we've got all this data! Whilst pimping your company at the same time! Give us money" And Mars said "Oh god yes, that's the good stuff, here's a wheelbarrow full of cash." You can always find someone who'll believe that anecdotes equals data. And sell them any amount of ridiculous crap on the back of that "data". Personality tests included.
But that's just my personal experience, natch.
