Posts Tagged: survey


20
Jun 11

You get what you pay for

The Toronto Star’s Paul Moloney reported on the weekend that one in five respondents quit before completing the survey regarding the city’s core service review.

That’s not a crazy bad level of non-completition, but when added to the damning criticism the survey has received elsewhere, it doesn’t really do much to bolster confidence that the results gleaned from this exercise will be worth much.

Considering the importance of the work being done as part of this service review, why does the survey feel so flimsy? Turn out, as Moloney reports, that the city went for the bargain basement cheapest option:

Rather than use one of the better-known Canadian polling/survey companies, the city hired Utah-based Qualtrics.

City spokeswoman Deborah Brown said staff reviewed 15 online consultation tools and asked for quotes from Canadian polling firms but chose Qualtrics because it could meet the tight timelines and “the total cost was just 10-20 per cent of the quotes we received from the other companies.

via 1 in 5 gave up on city’s online survey before completing it – thestar.com.

A bid that comes in 80 to 90 per cent below your other comparables seems almost destined to be junk, doesn’t it?

Mark it: “You get what you pay for” is one of those phrases that will come around again and again through the Rob Ford years.