Strongly Agree That Surveys Are Nonsense? I Do

Recently, I was asked to participate in a survey — one of those lovely long ones with ticking boxes and multiple pages. I assume you know what I mean. The ones where they ask you to indicate if you agree, strongly agree, disagree, or strongly disagree with a statement.

Seriously? What does strongly agree even mean? You either agree with something or you do not. How strong is your agreement supposed to be? Does adding the word strongly somehow make your opinion more valid? Or does it help the researchers feel they are capturing some hidden depth in your answer?

I get that surveys are meant to measure trends and attitudes, but some of these questionnaires feel like they were designed in a bubble. By the time I get to the tenth question with the same meaningless scale, I start ticking randomly just to get it over with. And do not get me started on the ones that try to ask the same thing five times in slightly different ways.

Are these surveys actually helping anyone? Or are we all just pretending this data is insightful while filling in answers we barely care about?

Maybe it is just me, but I strongly agree — with myself — that most of these surveys are a waste of time.

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