Surveys carried out by HR departments may be especially susceptible to this tendency because one of the main tenants of HR philosophy is to create an open, enjoyable, enabling work environment. Thus, it’s important for HR surveys to be crafted in such as way that they do not bias the responses towards positive feedback.
So, in the midst of wanting to measure the characteristics of a healthy work environment — characteristics that are inherently valenced in a positive direction — it becomes easy to design a questionnaire full of leading questions. For example, a question such as "How well does your manager embody ‘team spirit’?" seems reasonable at face value, but contains a strong presupposition, namely that the manager promotes collaboration and solidarity among the team. But don’t some bosses prefer and even encourage individual performance? Don’t some managers use competition among colleagues as a motivating tool? Perhaps the particular manager’s subordinates prefer an individualistic approach to work?
A series of questions worded like this would be more valid: "Does your manager prefer a collaborative work environment or an individualistic one?" Followed by: "Do you prefer a collaborative work environment or an individualistic one? From there, the researcher can measure the intensity of both responses and derive whether an employee and boss are on the same page in terms of "team spirit."
Unfortunately, the common mistakes don’t stop there. HR survey questions are often written in the form of an agree/disagree statement, which have long been shown to cause an acquiescence response bias. This is the phenomenon whereby people are subtly pushed towards the agree end of the scale because of the human tendency to generally be polite, agreeable, and respectful to others — especially towards people in positions of power. This is especially important in the context of HR because the nature of HR research reflects an imbalance of power between employees and their managers or their organisation more broadly. The more imbalance in an organisation’s structure, the more acute the acquiescence response bias.
Why even bother carrying out a survey when the answers aren’t truthful?
Everyone wants a good review but most importantly, in order for organisations to improve they need to carry out well-structured surveys that ask the right questions in the right ways providing honest feedback. So give respondents—your colleagues, after all—a chance to express how they truly feel and your firm will be better for it.
Dr Philip Garland is the Vice President of Methodology for SurveyMonkey
