"Campus Dining Survey." "Campus Parking Survey." "Public Transportation Survey." "Campus Technology Survey." These were the first four emails in my campus email inbox this morning. While I was looking at them, I got a phone call from the Honda dealership; they wanted me to complete a brief survey about my most recent experience in their service department. My answer: It was two years ago; I don't remember. In another email inbox, I had a survey from a Toyota dealership asking my father about his satisfaction in the Toyota brand. How this ended up in my email is completely beyond me. I've never owned a Toyota and the last time I went to a Toyota dealership was when I was car shopping in 2001.
I gave up on work and headed to Wal-Mart where, upon being handed my receipt, I was invited to complete yet another survey about my shopping experience for a chance to win a $1000 Wal-Mart gift card.
Back at home with groceries put away and the dog walked, I sit back down to my computer and open my campus email again. I have ANOTHER survey request about my satisfaction and usage habits of a textbook the department writes and prints and REQUIRES us to use. My personal email has a survey about parking in my apartment complex, which I find amusing since it's the fourth one this year and nothing has changed. (The complex, 2 years old now, built less than one parking space per apartment when some apartments have four cars to them. Somehow, our answering of surveys is supposed to direct them in how to resolve the problem, which I suggested that next time they don't be so ridiculously stupid. Perhaps it is unproductive responses like that that have caused them to send four surveys in one year about the same problem).
This has been going on for the last three or four years. I have been, and assume most of us have been, bombarded with survey requests from corporations, schools, retailers, and banks. Surveys on campus functions and infrastructure, textbook usage, shopping experiences, transportation habits, customer service, loan processes, marketing, money...dare I go on? No, I don't dare.
At first I felt flattered, naively of course, that they would seek my opinion. I would answer them thoughtfully. But with the glut of surveys that I am bombarded with now, I want to scream! None of my carefully answered surveys has made the lines at Wal-Mart any shorter, the staff more knowledgeable, or the produce more edible. My responses to Food Lion's surveys have in no way encouraged them to move the cluttered displays that transform their aisles into obstacle courses for people in mobility chairs or pushing a cart-- which is pretty much everybody. They haven't made the services at the bank any less expensive (when did I start paying them to use my money instead of them pay me?!) And they haven't encouraged the department for which I work to let me not use a textbook that I think is pretty much useless and an embarrassment to us. I don't ever eat on campus so I can't answer those surveys and aren't even sure why I get them since they aren't relevant, though I'm tempted to fill them in with random answers in order to skew their data. But all the time it has taken me to answer these surveys hasn't been rewarded with better services, more parking spaces, more widespread public transportation, or better books. I haven't gotten a damn thing from them but a lot of lost time I can never get back.
To make matters worse, these surveys, if they do allow you to put in a comment of your own at some point, limit it to a specific number of characters or only let you comment on things that you care nothing about. The questions are poorly formed and closed. These surveys don't seek information, knowledge. They only seek to make you feel important.
Once upon a time, way back in the 90s and before, surveys were used sparingly to collect quantitative data, to gauge quantitative trends. Now it's all qualitative questions they're asking and I'm not sure that surveys can actually work like that. I mean, how do you compile and reduce qualitative information to numbers? Maybe I didn't pay enough attention in statistics class.
On a personal level, surveys cause me a significant amount of anxiety. For example, I answered a mental health survey a few weeks ago and it asked me: "Did you have trouble thinking or concentrating?" Well, I always have trouble thinking or concentrating. It's hard to focus on work when there's drama at home or I have a head cold. What constitutes "trouble"? And if I answer "yes" to that question, does that somehow indict me? Make me a suspect in some sort of mental health crime? A Quality of Life Questionnaire wanted me to answer sixteen questions about my perception of my satisfaction with life quality by rating them on a scale of one (very poor) to five (very good) and I begin to panic because their is no objective definition provided for what is "very bad" or "very good." And sometimes I couldn't decide if it was average or above average...they didn't offer a 3.5 option on the scale. There's no room for indecision, self-reflection, or personal opinion. Your opinion is reduced into categories that are deemed most efficient for processing with no real engagement. It's on par with answering the monthly quiz questions about my sex life in Cosmopolitan magazine.
And then the surveys try not to be intrusive. "It will only take you ten minutes," they claim. But ten minutes or no, I still am not getting anything out of this at all. I have to pay for their time and services, but they don't have to pay for mine? And then if I delete their message, they send me a follow up email or automated phone message (American Express being notorious for this): "You still haven't answered our survey. Please complete the survey at your earliest convenience." I begin to feel badgered and guilty, judged inadequate by an email or phone survey.
To make matters worse, in the era of survey overload, people will answer surveys all day long for the mere hint of something free but will not answer the US Census, regarded by several of my neighbors with great suspicion. When they see a representative coming to their door, they hide in their apartment. But they'll answer surveys for Wal-Mart all day long. I don't get it.
I've decided I won't answer any more surveys. I'm done with them forever. I've even taken to filling out "other" on all necessary government, employment, and educational forms that ask about race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, and the like if I deem it's an option. If it's not, since they don't recognize sex other than male or female, I simply refuse to answer and leave it blank. It shouldn't be relevant anyway. I'm pretty sure this won't do any good, but it makes me feel a little better about it.
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