| R Squared |
I'm Rich Raquet (hence R squared), TRC's President and a market researcher for 30 years. I like to think and write about the industry's past, present and future, and to talk about how we can help drive change together. Enjoy. I look forward to the dialog. |
| Are Researchers Too Ethical? |
| Thursday, 10 December 2009 12:01 |
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Got an interesting question in my Linkedin morning update about the ethics of Market Researchers doing Market Intelligence work. While the question was vague enough to be unanswerable (what sort of Market Intelligence are you talking about?), it got me thinking about ethics. Specifically, I’ve been thinking that researchers are too often focused on strict ethical rules rather than on doing the right thing. So, right off, let me state that I totally believe in obeying laws, regulations and, yes, ethics. This extends to our dealings with clients, vendors and, most importantly respondents. I wouldn’t want to work in an industry that doesn’t take ethical responsibility seriously. I'm concerned, however, that we don't apply ethical standards intelligently. This, in turn, works counter to the principles our ethics claim to protect and harms our effectiveness as an industry. Telemarketers: Our Nemesis? For example, researchers talk a lot about how important respondents are. When I was starting out in the 80's we spoke with contempt about telemarketers and their wanton disregard for the rights of those they were calling. We rightly pushed for legislation that outlawed SUGGING, and held ourselves to a standard of confidentiality that ensured our work would never be used as a direct sales tool. I’ve come to believe that most of these beliefs or assumptions were incorrect. In the 90’s I got to know a number of telemarketers, and I found the experience was far from what I expected. Their call centers were as nice, or nicer, than those used in research. They screened and trained their employees, thoroughly and held them to a very high professional standard. Most shocking to me was the fact that they recorded all their sales on tapes (they had rooms full of them). I realized they validated their sales better than we did our interviews. As a result, TRC started recording all our work (couldn’t allow telemarketers to do something better than us), a practice that is more common now, but 15+ years later still far from universal. I’m sure there are unethical telemarketers…but there are plenty of unethical researchers too. Meanwhile our contempt for all things telemarketing, has led to an even greater focus on never using survey efforts to directly sell to respondents. On the surface, this makes sense…valuing respondents means keeping our word and respecting in any form their privacy. Often, however, it gets in the way of doing what respondents want. Two examples When I was an interviewer in college, the firm I worked for did a product placement for Post It Notes. As you might imagine, this new and innovative product was garnering rave reviews from those we called. Many asked us if they could order more…even if they had to pay for them. Lots of discussion ensued before we were provided with a name and number we could give consumers who wanted to call and order more. Respondents didn't understand. Why didn't we just have the company call them? Even with this compromise, many old school researchers at the firm thought we were “selling out.” Within the last decade I attended an annual CASRO meeting where a CRM firm talked about how they took negative responses from survey cards (the ones left in, say, a hotel room) and passed them on to the people responsible for the problems cited. In turn, those people would follow up with the customer to try and fix their problems. Researchers were appalled at this violation of respondent privacy, but then the CRM rep asked a few simple questions, "What would a respondent expect? Will he or she be more upset if a complaint they've made (and signed their name to) is addressed directly, or if he or she never hears from the company about the problem?" In other words and in both cases, strict adherence to firm ethical rules would not have served the respondent well. Acting ethically, and wisely Ultimately shouldn’t our goal be to do what respondents want? If so, then directly passing on information is often the right thing to do. I believe this should be limited to situations where the respondent agrees to it, and I don’t think researchers should ever go directly from conducting a survey to selling (thats both illegal and plain wrong).There's no question that replacing firm rules with the principle of putting the respondent first could lead to abuse….but those who would rationalize their way around this principle are probably the same ones who find a way to wiggle through the rules. I’d go so far as to suggest that if we all started to put the needs of the respondent first, we’d be holding ourselves to a higher standard today than we do now. Think I’m wrong? Then answer this question: Do you think respondents want to do 25-minute repetitive surveys? Comments (1)
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My points are:
First, 'Ethics' are not 'Rules' or 'Laws' . Ethics are acceptable codes of practice that people in a particular profession agree to follow in their work. If people in 'research' profession agree that a certain practice is 'OK' then that would be acceptable ethic.
Second, 'Research' is a profession perhaps different from newer professions such as 'telemarketing' or 'market intelligence' though analysis and often data collection techniques are shared between these professions.
Third, Two ethical considerations are in question in the examples you have given. 'Informed Consent' and 'Confidentiality' .
If a respondent is informed about how the interview data will be used and consent is obtained to provide his contact information of the respondent to the client, I see no violation of ethics.
'Confidentiality' is an ethical consideration where confidentiality of certain information is promised to the Respondent as a part of Informed consent procedures. Again, I see no violation of Ethics if specific informed consent is obtained to share contact information. Perhaps 'Confidentiality' is more applicable to sample research methods than to telemarketing or customer feedback calls.
Fourth, the "Vague' question you mention was vague indeed. I asked the question prompted by a controversy over a client specific contract within my startup research agency.The decision we took was not to offer or accept contracts for competitive intelligence work till we set up a separate team trained for the profession.
I like your website and thoughts shared on the blogs.