meaning: The Macer View/18

	The Macer View
	Comment and analysis from Tim Macer Number 18, February 2007

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The Macer View

What will the rise of DIY software mean for the research industry?

“Think! Most researchers don’t take part in surveys like this.” Could this be the kind of bleak message that will be a mandatory accompaniment to online research in the future, as the DIY survey brigade see off high-principled, but high-cost professional research for ever? For the first in its season of technology-related debates, the ASC picked a motion that “the rise of DIY research software” with its “potential to damage the professional market research industry.” A vote taken at the start indicated the ayes might take it, but at the end noes held it by a whisker.

Greg Smith, from Ipsos MORI and Steve Taylor (Inputech) led the attack: rogue pollsters who fish for respondents to answer fatuous and misleading questions are damaging the industry; its not just the public that can’t tell what’s real and what’s bogus, but clients too who see methodology and experience as an extravagance. A loaded gun in the wrong hands.

Steve Taylor, speaking with conviction and with only an hour’s notice, due to the unavailability of the original seconder, has clearly missed his true parliamentary vocation. Several amusing anecdotes from his perspective as a clearer-up of the messes that DIY surveyors make with cheap and nasty software, got closer to the subject than much of the rest of the debate. What DIY software is, was never fully explained.

Indeed, defenders Peter Wills (Snap Software) and Nicola Stanley, of Silver Dialogue, took a don’t blame the tools, blame the workman approach and outlined their impeccable research credentials as a software company that employs several professional researchers and as a one-woman research company with an obvious passion for professional research. There was a sense we had the wrong people in the dock.

The internet lowers the bar and puts fielding a survey within the reach of anyone with a credit card. But as Greg Smith neatly put it, the misuse of statistics is probably the world’s second oldest profession. However, as several audience members pointed out in the ensuring discussion, a lower cost of entry and the option to do some of the work appears actually to be growing the market. As more people attempt research for themselves, or build their own kitchens or do their own accounts soon realise: those who do it all the time tend to know the important tricks of the trade and can save them time, effort and protect them from making a howler of a mistake.

The problem scarcely raised was the growth industry in online research sites with dodgy survey building tools, haphazard data structures and crass libraries of questions, which defy the creation of a decent questionnaire, even if you tried, and related to the, the impossibility of assessing the quality of cheap access panels from outside. Yet, alongside the dubious sit some excellent products that continue to get better. This is one area where accreditation, not regulation, could go a long way improving things before the legislators step in, as they could. Maybe it’s job for the ASC or the MRS – or at least, a topic worthy of debate.

ASC evening meetings take place every two months in central London and are free to ASC and MRS members. See asc.org.uk.