« Don’t fear the YouTube | Main | Town halls: “A great conversation” »
June 03, 2008
Ban the “and”
As part of a communication measurement project, a colleague and I asked to review the company’s employee engagement survey to see if it contained any communication questions.
The survey did, indeed, ask about communication. But before I could focus on that, I was immediately distracted by another issue. Overall, the survey contained many questions with significant flaws: unclear, difficult to answer, poorly written. The most obvious problem was the proliferation of “and” questions—those that ask about more than one topic in a single question. Here’s a sample:
1. “Employees and supervisors are held accountable for quality.”
2. “Communication from leaders is meaningful and effective.”
3. “Changes in communication from leaders and managers occur as a result of my feedback.”
4. “Managers in my group communicate goals, strategies and performance to employees.”
5. “Employees are encouraged to communicate their opinions and ideas to their managers.”
(Note: All questions are statement questions that ask employees to indicate their agreement according to the five-point Likert Scale, from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”.)
What’s the problem? “And” questions violate an essential rule of survey questions: To be specific so that respondents can provide a precise and unequivocal answer. As a result, “and” questions create a potential conflict where one part of the question may be true, and another not true.
For example, in question 1, employees may be held accountable, but supervisors may not. And, in question 4, managers may always communicate goals, but only occasionally strategies and never performance.
When faced with an “and” question, respondents tend to split the difference—choosing the neutral or “sometimes” response to manage their confusion. This leads to data that’s at best inconclusive, and at worst misleading.
So, please, write questions that only contain one concept per question. Ban the “and.”
Posted by Alison Davis at June 3, 2008 08:33 AM