Are Surveys and Interviews considered Objective Measurements?

Are surveys and interviews considered as an objective measurement?

  • Surveys can be considered objective evidence

    Votes: 2 66.7%
  • Interviews can be considered objective evidence

    Votes: 1 33.3%
  • Surveys cannot be considered objective evidence

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Interviews cannot be considered objective evidence

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • It depends

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Other (explain)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    3

Jen Kirley

Quality and Auditing Expert
Staff member
Admin
#11
The design and use of surveys is a big subject - much bigger than the card on the table at Pizza Hut. A Google search on "survey design" brough up almost 4 million "hits."

It's a serious business among researchers, who have developed methods to maximize confidence levels - and minimize the effect Steel described.

But although a well crafted and administered survey can indeed be objective evidence, but its usefulness is limited. For customer satisfaction I more recommend the one-on-one with sales people - surveys don't explain why people select the answer they do, and most don't bother to fill in details. The information in surveys is often not very actionable and sometimes it data is too late to act on. Then, if you do act on it a follow up survey may, or may not reflect an impact. Its responses may have been entered for other reasons.
 
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bobdoering

Stop X-bar/R Madness!!
Trusted Information Resource
#13
Objective: "expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations"

It is evidence...just not objective or very good evidence. As indicated, survey have horrible accuracy due to inherent design problems and the predisposition of only people with a grudge to bear filling them out. At best, there is only a 30% response rate. That said, if you DO get some back, there is some evidence that can be gleaned.

Very few organizations are in a position to have a survey verified as adequate. It is handy if there is a marketing doctoral program nearby to help out, though.
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
#14
Objective: "expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations"

It is evidence...just not objective or very good evidence. As indicated, survey have horrible accuracy due to inherent design problems and the predisposition of only people with a grudge to bear filling them out. At best, there is only a 30% response rate. That said, if you DO get some back, there is some evidence that can be gleaned.

Very few organizations are in a position to have a survey verified as adequate. It is handy if there is a marketing doctoral program nearby to help out, though.
Whether or not survey data is "good evidence" depends in large part on the degree of reliance or confidence one puts in it. Most complex questions or hypotheses, before being accepted, are supported by multiple lines of evidence, and in that sense, survey data can be considered "good" if it's part of a package and not used in isolation to support a proposition.

I've quoted it before and I'll do it again--the late Stephen Jay Gould's observation on objectivity:
Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny — and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).
 

BradM

Staff member
Admin
#15
Please explain your answer.
A couple of suggestions would be to add: It depends in your answer. Or move it to a Likert Scale. So it would look something like

In general, valid surveys can be considered objective evidence.
Then you would add five choices like Strongly Agree, somewhat agree, no preference, somewhat disagree, and Strongly disagree.

Second, the two topics need to be separated. Responding for both survey and interview is a bit difficult and will throw off any results you might gain from this. I would tend to lean towards a validated survey being more objective than a non-structure interview. However, a semi-structure/ structure interview done by a professional can elicit some useful information.

Thirdly (as mentioned already) there are several issues with developing the survey, and who the survey is given to. What is the response rate? If it is 90%, I would consider it representative. However, if the response rate is 30%, I would have serious questions about it.

So, I will assume a full validated survey, given to a representative sample, and repeated multiple times to avoid time issues. And I will assume a well constructed interview given by an impartial interviewer that is well trained on being objective. In that, I'll answer yes.:)
 

Bev D

Heretical Statistician
Staff member
Super Moderator
#16
surveys are always subjective measures. by definition. they are based on personal opinion and personal experience.

this is not to say that they are not useful when properly designed and analyzed (surveys result in ordinal data not continuous data, the statistical analyses are different). but they are not precise objective measures. even with a likert scale (do the MSA on that and you'll see how imprecise that precise scale number is).

don't be confused about the term objective in its different uses. survey results and individual responses may be objective evidence that the survey wasn't done; but that doesn't make the survey results objective data.
 
K

Ka Pilo

#17
A couple of suggestions would be to add: It depends in your answer. Or move it to a Likert Scale. So it would look something like

Then you would add five choices like Strongly Agree, somewhat agree, no preference, somewhat disagree, and Strongly disagree.
Thank you. Please add these options to the poll.

Second, the two topics need to be separated. Responding for both survey and interview is a bit difficult and will throw off any results you might gain from this. I would tend to lean towards a validated survey being more objective than a non-structure interview. However, a semi-structure/ structure interview done by a professional can elicit some useful information.
I agree.
Thirdly (as mentioned already) there are several issues with developing the survey, and who the survey is given to. What is the response rate? If it is 90%, I would consider it representative. However, if the response rate is 30%, I would have serious questions about it.
Did you mean something like if the same number of people or all of them believe that 2+2=5 then it should be accepted as true and correct?
 

BradM

Staff member
Admin
#18
Thank you. Please add these options to the poll.
I have added some options per your request. If that is not representative of your wishes, please let a moderator know.:)

Did you mean something like if the same number of people or all of them believe that 2+2=5 then it should be accepted as true and correct?
Well.... I don't know; you tell me.:D:tg: Saying, what are you trying to suggest by the word objective? Like BevD suggested in her post, it can go many different ways.

Say you are running a restaurant and you perceive that people like the color of tablecloths you are using. Your perception is not subjective. However, you have a simple anonymous comment card that asks about the table cloth cover. You have people fill them out for six months or so and in the end 80% say they like it. Then, you have objective evidence to support your assertion.

But since you put this question in the internal auditing forum, I am surmising that you may be asking about objective evidence during an audit. Is this a survey/ interview results you are looking at that has already been accomplished, or conducting the survey/interview during the audit?
And what is the nature of the area of interest?:)

Sorry for all the questions.:eek: We just may need to clarify what issue is being addressed here.
 
K

Ka Pilo

#20
Yes, for certain large values of "2," or small values of "5." :tg:
Seems that playing the numbers game to decide if something is true or false is getting to be an accepted norm in "democratic" society. Are surveys an accepted in auditing also? If so, do you think it's absurb and exteremely dangerous?

As for interviews, of course, they are generally being practiced.
 
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