Kantar's Profiles Blog

Do I want to know? Yes - you need to know!

Today’s researcher is all about gathering data to create insights that provide guidance and strengthen the core business, future-proofing decision making for their company. In truth that only covers the ‘need-to-know’ part; there is a large share of ‘nice-to-know’ insights as well that are gathered for various reasons (e.g., to verify general thoughts or just to satisfy the board, directors, managers and other influential people within organizations). Need-to-know and Nice-to know insights are both based on data.

In any context there are many questions with factual answers which are difficult to answer: “have you considered an affair?,” “how many vegetables do you eat?,” “how often do you go to the gym?” and “have you lied to your boss?” to name just a few.

When it comes to a question like “how much do you drink” it can be hard enough to be honest with ourselves let alone a researcher! Fortunately the anonymity and context of online research puts it in a unique position to secure honest answers to sensitive questions; however, this is no easy feat. When we ask a question there are many hurdles we must overcome to reach an honest answer.

The conversation around conducting surveys with online panels rather than face to face or CATI is one that comes up every day for me in South East Asia. Whilst this is an entirely valid discussion, online actually adds ways to ensure trustworthy and valid respondents. In this mini-series, we unlock the truths behind these myths.

Knowing who someone really is isn’t exclusive to our industry. If we look at the everyday world, people can look us in the eye and lie. We filter this, both consciously and subconsciously and take forward what we have confidence in being true. Now back to research. As a student, I had friends who would get calls from focus group recruiters offering them 5000 Rs ($80 USD). The next question would be 'do you like/ consume ‘x’ product?' They would agree to anything to get into the focus group and take the money home, including saying they drank Malibu regularly (I’m not sure anyone can say that hand on heart!) Whilst these recruiters are not a fair reflection of all in the industry, online uses pre-screeners that are far more subtle than this tactic (and far less heavily incentivised, granted) which encourage a level of honesty from the outset.

Depending on who you ask, the idea of a ‘lie detector’ might spark visions of Orwellian instruments of torture or Tom Cruise sweating it out in Minority Report (or Tom Cruise sweating it out under E-Meter for that matter!). At Lightspeed GMI, we think about lie detectors as less sinister and more scientific. As part of our commitment to helping clients ensure they’re drawing business conclusions from accurate data, we spend a lot of time thinking about measuring and ensuring quality. We even have a suite of services that we offer as standard on our business to make sure we’re truly delivering on our promise of making good research easy to conduct. Lightspeed GMI Honesty Detector is one of services we use. ‘HD’, as we affectionately call it, helps evaluate the extent to which survey respondents are truthful in answering questions. It’s these respondents who provide a portion of the foundational data for a client’s business decision.