Understanding Survey Biases and Their Impact

The video discusses surveys as a user research method, highlighting their quick and cost-effective nature. It focuses on three response biases: acquiescence, social desirability, and recency. Acquiescence bias is the tendency to agree with survey questions, social desirability bias involves over-reporting favorable behaviors, and recency bias gives more weight to recent experiences. The video concludes by emphasizing that surveys measure perceptions, not objective performance, and large sample sizes help mitigate biases.

What is a key advantage of using surveys in user research?

• They eliminate all forms of bias.

• They are quick and relatively inexpensive.

• They are always free to conduct.

• They provide objective performance data.

What is acquiescence bias?

• The tendency to disagree with all survey questions.

• The tendency to skip survey questions.

• The tendency to provide neutral responses.

• The tendency to agree with survey questions regardless of content.

How does acquiescence bias affect survey results?

• It has no impact on survey results.

• It causes positively skewed results.

• It results in a balanced set of responses.

• It leads to negatively skewed results.

What is social desirability bias?

• The tendency to ignore socially acceptable behaviors.

• The tendency to report only negative behaviors.

• The tendency to over-report socially acceptable behaviors.

• The tendency to under-report all behaviors.

Why might respondents under-report their mobile device usage?

• Because it is seen as a socially undesirable behavior.

• Because they forget how much they use it.

• Because they want to provide accurate data.

• Because they are not asked about it.

What is recency bias?

• The tendency to focus on the overall experience.

• The tendency to focus on the first experience.

• The tendency to focus on the most recent experience.

• The tendency to focus on the least memorable experience.

How can recency bias impact survey data?

• It balances out the data.

• It can skew data based on recent experiences.

• It has no impact on survey data.

• It ensures data is always accurate.

What do surveys primarily measure?

• User perceptions.

• Objective performance.

• Technical specifications.

• Financial data.

Why is a large sample size important in surveys?

• To make data collection faster.

• To ensure findings are representative of the entire population.

• To eliminate the need for data analysis.

• To increase the cost of the survey.

What is the benefit of being aware of response biases?

• It guarantees accurate data.

• It makes surveys unnecessary.

• It helps in better evaluating research findings.

• It allows you to completely eliminate biases.