I strongly agree: too many phone surveys

Nita Nettleton can be reached at nitan@alaska.com.

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Juneau would appear to be a real snoopy town if you add up all the opinion surveys of the last year. Reliably the phone rings around 6 p.m. and a concerned neighbor wants to know what I think about one thing or another. Well, actually, the concerned neighbor usually wants to know how strongly I agree with them on the topic of the moment. And the caller may be in another state.

Public opinion is powerful stuff and should not be trifled with. I always try to be a competent respondent to the phone surveys, answering as truthfully as I can. When none of the response options are appealing, I am not ashamed to say I don't know or can't make a selection. Sometimes the caller will beg me to just pick one, but I respect the science or bureau or whatever it is of data collection and stick with honest choices. I may run for president one day and don't want flippant or inappropriate phone survey answers from my past to froth up an embarrassing and expensive scandal.

You know why we have so many phone surveys, don't you? Clearly, not enough of us vote in the primaries or fill out all the consumer survey cards when we buy appliances. We don't attend enough public meetings (I know, you could have sworn you did), we don't send POMs to our elected officials or respond to the annual constituent surveys from our congressional delegation. And when we do respond, possibly we don't do it correctly or in a timely manner. Perhaps some of us aren't truthful or thorough in filling out the pages of demographic and political information about ourselves when we buy something over the Internet. So we are doomed to chat with a stranger every evening during dinner about political issues. Perhaps it makes a nobody-cares-what-I-think citizen feel that someone does care what he/she thinks enough to bother calling him/her personally over dinner to ask. Personally may be a strong word, so often the caller mutilates my name or launches into a script without the barest pleasantries, not even asking if I'm willing or able to participate.

I think we would all be better sports about the phone surveys if the response options were more like real life. Is there anywhere else in your day where you have to declare that you either strongly agree or simply agree with anything? Would you put a little more effort into clarifying your feelings if you could align with something closer to normal speech? A., Totally, B., Sort of, C., Uh, D., Not really, or E., No way. Is it just me or are there times when the question really isn't a question. A., Amen, B., Last week, C., Plutonium, D., More than five, or E., Strongly can't recall.

I feel more intruded upon and less connected with the surveyors when they read a script to me. It helps a lot if they introduce themselves and go through at least a minimal personal exchange before beginning the prepared lines. Most read well, but sometimes it's a bad script, or not written to be spoken. I can't help mentally editing and sometimes I've fallen behind when we get to the reaction part. I applaud a caller who will go back over what I missed and paraphrase or restate if I don't get it.

The call last evening was from a national organization asking for my reaction to a recorded statement they wanted to play for me. I grabbed paper and pencil (habit) and listened intently, ready to react. After the recording, a second voice with no explanation of what happened to the other guy came on the line to ask me if I agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. My reaction was not on that end of the meter, so I took the opportunity to share that the statement was buried in a negative polarization of emotion over values and that the issue was too important to alienate the people who really needed to work together for a solution. I went on to offer to rewrite the statement for clarity and to invite focused and constructive debate, but the caller strongly disagreed with me and hung up.

Nita Nettleton can be reached at nitan@alaska.net.