As a small busi\u00adness own\u00ader, I often get people call\u00ading up with some sur\u00advey or anoth\u00ader. They want to know wheth\u00ader my busi\u00adness is grow\u00ading, wheth\u00ader I\u2019ll be hir\u00ading more people this year, and what soft\u00adware and ser\u00advices I sell. If these sur\u00adveys are the basis of the eco\u00adnom\u00adic polls pre\u00addict\u00ading what\u2019s hap\u00adpen\u00ading this year, I\u2019d advise the world to dis\u00adcount most of the answers. The ques\u00adtions sounds like they were writ\u00adten pre\u00adsup\u00adpos\u00ading par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlar answers; since the ques\u00adtions often don\u2019t make sense the answers won\u2019t either.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As an example, the loc\u00adal MBE<\/span><\/acronym> had a sur\u00advey about ship\u00adping, which included the ques\u00adtion \u201cHow much extra would you pay for faster ship\u00adping?\u201d to which I answered \u201cdepends on how import\u00adant it is that it get there faster\u201d. This was not con\u00adsidered a reas\u00adon\u00adable answer; I was meant to put a dol\u00adlar fig\u00adure on it, accord\u00ading to the rules the sur\u00advey-taker had. Which she was\u00adn\u2019t meant to show me, as they expli\u00adcitly stated the sur\u00advey-takers were not to explain the ques\u00adtions to people tak\u00ading the sur\u00advey (why not? I don\u2019t know, and she did\u00adn\u2019t either.)<\/p>\n Today\u2019s gem was for soft\u00adware and ser\u00advices com\u00adpan\u00adies. I am a con\u00adsult\u00adant; I don\u2019t sell or resell soft\u00adware and I don\u2019t write soft\u00adware pack\u00adages for people either (I don\u2019t count the odd XSLT<\/span> stylesheet or XML<\/span> edit\u00ador cus\u00adtom\u00adiz\u00ada\u00adtion although I guess I could). After say\u00ading that I don\u2019t cre\u00adate or resell soft\u00adware, the ques\u00adtions included what pro\u00adpor\u00adtion of my com\u00adpany\u2019s rev\u00aden\u00adue is from selling soft\u00adware or hard\u00adware, what plat\u00adforms the solu\u00adtions run on, and wheth\u00ader my com\u00adpany is a mem\u00adber of vendor part\u00adner pro\u00adgrams that are designed for soft\u00adware resellers. More inter\u00adest\u00ading were the ques\u00adtions about wheth\u00ader I get In all, 27 minutes of oddball ques\u00adtions with a large pro\u00adpor\u00adtion of answers being \u201cthe ques\u00adtion is not applic\u00adable\u201d and the sur\u00advey-taker ask\u00ading \u201cso do you want me to put you down as \u2018don\u2019t know\u2019 or \u2018refuse to answer\u2019?\u201d And, of course, she did\u00adn\u2019t know why \u2018not applic\u00adable\u2019 was not con\u00adsidered a reas\u00adon\u00adable answer. I hope the sur\u00advey pur\u00advey\u00adors can make more sense out of the answers than I could of the questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a small busi\u00adness own\u00ader, I often get people call\u00ading up with some sur\u00advey or anoth\u00ader. They want to know wheth\u00ader my busi\u00adness is grow\u00ading, wheth\u00ader I\u2019ll be hir\u00ading more people this year, and what soft\u00adware and ser\u00advices I sell. If these sur\u00adveys are the basis of the eco\u00adnom\u00adic polls pre\u00addict\u00ading what\u2019s hap\u00adpen\u00ading this year, \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cSur\u00adveys\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}kick\u00adbacks<\/strike> com\u00admis\u00adsions for recom\u00admend\u00ading soft\u00adware \u2014 I assume this must hap\u00adpen although wheth\u00ader people would really admit to it on the phone to a sur\u00advey-taker is anoth\u00ader mat\u00adter. (And, for the record, I don\u2019t.)<\/p>\n