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Wow. This is the second article about my field in as many weeks. w00t!

The customers think it matters ... otherwise this business wouldn't exist.

Darned right. As long as people are willing to pay us to conduct surveys, we'll happily take their money.

And if you think those in the business are bad at maths, think of who the customers are. Politicians and the such. Notorious maths flunkies. Show them some fancy pie charts and percent signs, especially those in their favor, and they're your best friend forever.

While I can't argue with your assessment of the math skills of political types, if you think they're our main customers, you're mistaken. Many political polls are sponsored by media outlets, to generate easy stories to put on their front pages. Other political polls aren't paid for by anyone -- some polling firms will do them for nothing just to increase their name recognition among the public. If you're Canadian, and you can remember a polling firm called "The Angus Reid Group", this is something they did all the time.

There's much more money to be made in consumer research, where we contact people to get their opinions about many common products or services they use or purchase. And guess what? If we call you for one of these surveys, it's very likely that we got your phone number from the company that's paying for the survey, and they usually only provide residential numbers. Any telphone numbers you provide when you sign up for a service or buy a product are fair game here. So now you're thinking you'll just leave that warranty card's "home telephone number" field blank, and you won't get called, right? Sorry -- with your name and at least part of your home address, anyone can look up your home phone number (assuming you have a land line, and that it's listed).

Anyway ... I don't want to make my industry sound like telemarketing. First, we never sell anything. (Really. Unfortunately, there are many telemarketers who will pretend to be conducting a survey in order to get their foot in the door, so to speak, and after asking you a few questions, they'll hit you with a sales pitch. We hate this, because this is one of the reasons people are starting to sour on participating in surveys.) Second, we're much easier to get rid of. All you have to do is say "No!" if you don't want to participate when we call you for any specific survey. If the caller continues to badger you, chances are they're really a telemarketer trying to make quota. Finally, an interviewer from a reputable market research firm should be completely willing to tell you their company's name and contact information. (They might not be able to tell you the name of the sponsor of the survey only because you might answer the questions differently if you knew who commissioned the survey.) If the caller won't identify their employer, then again, they're probably a telemarketer.

If you're in the U.S. and you're at all curious about what market researchers are really up to, here's the consumer information page for the MRA (The Market Research Association) that many American market research and polling firms belong to:

http://www.mra-net.org/for_consumer/index.cfm

Of course that is because the research is being run by a market research company who is bound by certain ethical standards.

this prevents them from passing on identifiable data unless the respondent specifically says yes.

In most instances (99.9%) companies belonging to the MRA do follow this code. I used to work for a market research company who once tried to pass on data without permission but our group (Data processors) refused. we won as they had no moral right to make us do that.

first, there's a big difference between a telemarketer and a market researcher. telemarketers are almost always sleazy, and from having worked for a market research company i can tell you that most of them aren't. not all of them, but most of them.

market researchers (the guys who call you on the phone to do surveys) are NOT trying to sell you ANYTHING. they want you to answer a few questions that their client is interested in. these are the same people who call you and ask you if you're going to vote and who you're going to vote for.

while i believe the client (the one who hired the research company in the first place) shouldn't have asked to you to run a program they send you, i can almost positively assure you that they mean no harm. to be on the safe side, mailing the disk to your office was a smart idea, but if you want to look into it further, check your phone book. if they aren't a local company (most are in the central time zone) look on the web, there's an association of market research companies, here that will give you a list of members.
"Leave the gun, take the canoli."

MRA members must sign (every year, not just when they join) a Code of Data Collection Standards. Note: Enforcement is pretty much on the honor principle.) Right now the code does NOT reflect the ability to track people via cookies, etc. Whatever my feelings about privacy are (I spend more time than I'd like to admit refusing to give out my SSN, and then explaining why it is a bad choice to use the SSN as an all purpose ID) I alone cannot rewrite MRA policy. There is an Internet Ethics Task Force in the process of evaluating how the Association should respond to modern data collection. However, a lot of these people are not computer savvy (or even computer literate) and are not fully aware of the concerns many informed consumers have regarding privacy and data collection. If you want a chance to perhaps influence them, you can post a message in the forum or e-mail me or the general e-mail box and express your concerns.

MRA members must sign (every year, not just when they join) a Code of Data Collection Standards. Note: Enforcement is pretty much on the honor principle.) Right now the code does NOT reflect the ability to track people via cookies, etc. Whatever my feelings about privacy are (I spend more time than I'd like to admit refusing to give out my SSN, and then explaining why it is a bad choice to use the SSN as an all purpose ID) I alone cannot rewrite MRA policy. There is an Internet Ethics Task Force in the process of evaluating how the Association should respond to modern data collection. However, a lot of these people are not computer savvy (or even computer literate) and are not fully aware of the concerns many informed consumers have regarding privacy and data collection. If you want a chance to perhaps influence them, you can post a message in the forum or e-mail me or the general e-mail box and express your concerns.

MRA members must sign (every year, not just when they join) a Code of Data Collection Standards. Note: Enforcement is pretty much on the honor principle.) Right now the code does NOT reflect the ability to track people via cookies, etc. Whatever my feelings about privacy are (I spend more time than I'd like to admit refusing to give out my SSN, and then explaining why it is a bad choice to use the SSN as an all purpose ID) I alone cannot rewrite MRA policy. There is an Internet Ethics Task Force in the process of evaluating how the Association should respond to modern data collection. However, a lot of these people are not computer savvy (or even computer literate) and are not fully aware of the concerns many informed consumers have regarding privacy and data collection. If you want a chance to perhaps influence them, you can post a message in the forum or e-mail me or the general e-mail box and express your concerns.

MRA members must sign (every year, not just when they join) a Code of Data Collection Standards. Note: Enforcement is pretty much on the honor principle.) Right now the code does NOT reflect the ability to track people via cookies, etc. Whatever my feelings about privacy are (I spend more time than I'd like to admit refusing to give out my SSN, and then explaining why it is a bad choice to use the SSN as an all purpose ID) I alone cannot rewrite MRA policy. There is an Internet Ethics Task Force in the process of evaluating how the Association should respond to modern data collection. However, a lot of these people are not computer savvy (or even computer literate) and are not fully aware of the concerns many informed consumers have regarding privacy and data collection. If you want a chance to perhaps influence them, you can post a message in the forum or e-mail me or the general e-mail box and express your concerns.

Download Demon may well claim that "this is all anonymous, we don't link names with activity, blah blah blah" but as we have seen in the past with DoubleClick (who just created a special privacy panel within their company to act as window dressing while addressing privacy issues) companies start out collecting 'anonymous' data and then later suddenly decide to link the data to names.

I work in Marketing Research, where data collection is mostly what we do and so privacy issues, especially internet privacy, is "suddenly" a hot topic. MRA has a forum where any marketing research issue, including how you feel about your privacy, can be addressred. If you are interested in having some voice in how that data is used and collected, please post at www.mra-net.org/forum/. MRA sets a lot of marketing research industry standards which our members follow, and I'd rather privacy was a bigger concern, not a brief one or two lines buried in policies somewhere. We don't even have a privacy policy right now.

You can keep marketing research from doing what other industries are doing.

*shrug*

I have the great joy (ahem) of working for an association of marketing researchers who spend a lot of their time trying to explain to the world that they are different from telemarketers. And in some ways they are -- when they call to bother you they aren't trying to see you anything, just bother you. There are some repercussions from this. Although you can ask to be put on a do-not-call list and be spared telemarketers, these lists don't actually apply to market researchers.

Within the Marketing Research Association there is an ethics committee that sets policy for the association which member companies have to uphold.

If the idea that you can be called at 8:30 by some guy who wants your opinion about some inane thing even though you are on a do-not-call list (or privacy issues and who has access to demographic info about you) bugs you, you can, well, spam the MRA.

The forums are one place to vent.

So is the general e-mail.

I have the great joy (ahem) of working for an association of marketing researchers who spend a lot of their time trying to explain to the world that they are different from telemarketers. And in some ways they are -- when they call to bother you they aren't trying to see you anything, just bother you. There are some repercussions from this. Although you can ask to be put on a do-not-call list and be spared telemarketers, these lists don't actually apply to market researchers.

Within the Marketing Research Association there is an ethics committee that sets policy for the association which member companies have to uphold.

If the idea that you can be called at 8:30 by some guy who wants your opinion about some inane thing even though you are on a do-not-call list (or privacy issues and who has access to demographic info about you) bugs you, you can, well, spam the MRA.

The forums are one place to vent.

So is the general e-mail.

I work (ick) for a Marketing Research Association that is in the process of trying to establish ethical guidelines for our members on internet research for marketing purposes. We have public forums for anyone to go and share their opinions. If you think what Double Click did is vile (or if you think they are just wonderful)and if you want to express concern about the Double Click CEO making it to the board of the AMA, I encourage you to go and post (post early, post often) and get these people to include your privacy conerns in their ethical guidelines for internet research.

Marketing Research Association Forums

You can also e-mail me with your concerns and I can pass them on to the ethics committee.

I try and explain to people here about privacy concerns, but a lot of them just don't get it. In the theory of "strength in numbers" maybe slashdot readers can help.