Surveys. We take em, we send em out, we pour over the data and make decisions based on what we think the people want.
Use care.
You can conclude 86% of people keep a seat belt fastened during a flight, yeah, ok. But what about the 24% of the people who take the seat with them to the bathroom? Who are these people? Do 24% of all flyers get on the plane, buckle up and unbuckle only after the flight comes to the gate and the pilot has turned off the seatbelt sign? Really?
My (overly sarcastic) observation is you need to use care when you draft those survey questions so you don’t end up with 4 out of 5 dentists wishing they were the fifth one.
From my habits and what I've seen of my seatmates -- yeah, I'd say it's not at all implausible that 24% of the people flying simply don't need to go to the bathroom during a typical continental-U.S. flight. This seems particularly likely given that there's probably that many people in the flying public who rarely make fully cross-continent nonstop flights.
Nonetheless, I think your larger point is quite solid!
Posted by: Brooks Moses | August 07, 2009 at 13:46
It's pretty rare to go to the bathroom unless it's a very long flight, such as a transatlantic one. Most intra-EU flights take a max of about 3 hours.
Posted by: Barry Kelly | August 07, 2009 at 19:58
For a year or so in my pre-Microsoft life, I developed technical surveys for Intel on topics like whether IHVs planned to support Plug and Play, whether notebook OEMs would use standardized batteries, etc. My conclusion: it's really easy to spend serious money on a survey that delivers reams of information that's utterly useless. Collecting data that you can soundly base serious business decisions upon is very very challenging, and over that year I mostly learned how much I didn't know and a subset of all the things not to do. And developed a deep respect for people who develop good surveys. (Oh, and I'm one of the 24% who never unbuckle the seatbelt, even SEA-LHR.)
Posted by: Peter | August 10, 2009 at 20:12