Survey Says ...

I'm subscribed to survey website which sends me surveys to fill out maybe once a week or once every two weeks. It does actually pay, but I qualify so infrequently for the demographics they look for, that I've completed only 3 or 4 full surveys over the last two years for a grand total of $20 in my pocket and some free facial cleansing cloths from what I assume was Dove (unlabeled, but the cloths looks exactly like the Dove ones I buy - score!).

I just finished filling out a survey for Bread X (anonymized because, while I don't remember the terms of service, I'm sure there's something in there about not divulging the survey contents). It was one of the strangest surveys I've taken.

The gist was the bread brand is trying to market directly to women and is feeling out the reaction to putting together a women centric website centered around healthy living. They want you to connect their bread with healthy living.

The survey went on to ask if buying Bread X correlated with some goals women have, like:

- Hiking the Pacific Something Trail
- Getting more fiber in their diet
- Learning how to swing dance
- Learning a new language
- Biking to work three days a week

Maybe I'm just dense, but honestly the only connection to bread I made was getting more fiber. A specific brand of bread doesn't so much correlate to the others (other than very cursorily as a possible part of a healthy diet). Not "I eat Bread X therefore I can learn how to swing dance!"

But here was the best part: one of the last questions was "Are big companies bad for society?", which you were to answer either strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, or strongly agree. What?! I can't answer that question with one of those five choices. There are insane amounts of nuance to answering that question. What they really needed was an "it depends" option.