Why did we ask those questions?

By Paul Whitham LPSNZ, Councillor for Publications

IN FEBRUARY THE PSNZ Council conducted a survey to determine the opinion of members regarding the five-year time limit on national exhibition entries. As with most decisions that the PSNZ Council makes, a number of people were very quick to comment on the Facebook group about the questions asked.

While the survey has been completed, we will be using similar surveys in the future to gauge opinions, so I thought it important to provide context around a couple of questions that people took issue with.

Have you entered the national exhibition in the last five years?

In research this is referred to as a qualifying question. It provides more information in terms of the responses given to another question.

In our survey question one asked whether you were in favour of the time limit. On its own it gives us a simple result. However, when you add the question about actual entry into the national exhibition, you were able to see if those people who had actually entered the salon had a different opinion to those that did not.

Ultimately it was the second question, which some members regarded as irrelevant, that decided the overall survey. The results of Question 1 were as follows:

In favour of a limit

Number %

212 45.2% Against a limit 185 39.4% No preference either way 79 15.4% 469

This showed that a majority of members were either in favour or did not care that a time limit was imposed.

However, when you split these numbers using Question 2, we saw that the overall result was being driven mainly by people who had not entered the exhibition in the previous five years.

In favour of a limit Against a limit No preference either way

Entered the NE Did not Enter Number % Number %

84 35.1% 126 55.8% 128 53.6% 56 30.8% 27 11.3% 79 19.5% 239 226

Without question 2, in all likelihood the Council would not have reversed the decision it had made to limit entries to the national exhibition.

What is your name?

Most people were happy to provide their name on the form, however one person did question whether we were trying to be the police. To answer that question, no we weren’t.

The reality with any survey sent out by email is that your responses are not truly anonymous. The system will be tracking the email addresses and it does record them with the responses.

The reason for asking for the name was twofold. Firstly, it let us identify any duplicate responses quickly. In all surveys there are duplicate responses, quite often caused when the person’s internet is a little slow and they have pressed the submit button a number of times.

To overcome this, survey software can let you eliminate duplicate responses; however, that would not work in the case of PSNZ. Of our 1400 members, some 140 share an email address with somebody else. Therefore, to only allow an email address to be used once is to deprive 70 members of their opinion. We will always ask for a name so that we can provide a voice to those that share email addresses.