The Oregon Biz Report - Business News from Oregon

August 4, 2008

By Dr. Bill Conerly, Businomics, Conerly Consulting LLC,

In graduate school I was taught to distrust surveys of consumer behavior.  “Look at what they do, not what they say,” was the lesson.  The Wall Street Journal reinforces that training with an eye-opening article about people lying to poll-takers.  One striking example is the discrepancy between answers to a live person on the telephone compared to entering answers on a computer form:

Went to church last week:     56% on the phone,     25% online
Gambled last month:           21% on the phone,     28% online
Donate to charity regularly:  67% on the phone,     57% online
Brush teeth twice daily:      78% on the phone,     64% online
Exercise regularly:           58% on the phone,     35% online
Drank alcohol last week:      39% on the phone,     53% online

Keep this in mind whenever you see a consumer survey.  Even more importantly, when a newspaper reporter draws a conclusion from interviewing a handful of people, be very, very skeptical.

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Bill Conerly is principal of Conerly Consulting LLC, chief economist of abcInvesting.com, and was previously Senior Vice President at First Interstate Bank. Bill Conerly writes up-to-date comments on the economy on his blog called “Businomics” and produces a monthly audio magazine available on CD. Conerly is author of “Businomics™: From the Headlines to Your Bottom Line: How to Profit in Any Economic Cycle”, which connects the dots between the economic news and business decisions.