Following years of collecting statistics about how much money residents spend on food condiments per month and if they are satisfied with the way their neighbors take care of their gardens, the state has conducted a survey to see if residents like its surveys.
“We wanted to get more insight into how residents feel about the periodic surveys we conduct,” said Serge Eicher, assistant director of the national statistics agency and head of its participant satisfaction unit.
In order to carry out the survey satisfaction survey, more than 140,000 individuals in Luxembourg were contacted, with nearly half of those agreeing to take part.
Those who declined to participate were asked to answer a few questions before hanging up their phones.
Some of these included “how would you rate the time and manner in which we contacted you today?” and “how was our response when you said that you did not want to participate in our survey satisfaction survey?”
Those who agreed to participate were asked to give their feelings about surveys in general, the agency’s own surveys, and any surveys in other countries in which they had taken part. They were also asked how they felt about the word “survey.”
“The data we have collected will help us to create more satisfactory surveys in the future,” Eicher said.
At the end of the interview, respondents were encouraged to rate the survey in which they had just taken part, as well as give their feelings about the way the interviewer solicited their feelings about the survey in which they had just taken part.
“While it might appear that our effort to better understand how respondents feel about our surveys is superfluous, we feel it is the best way to continue spiralling forward,” Eicher said.
“Did I say ‘spiralling forward’? I meant to say, getting sucked into a cosmic statistical vortex as if in an LSD-inspired dream, like sitting in a desert at night and looking up at the Milky Way and wondering, can the eye look at itself?”
According to a source from deep within the secretive world of statistics collection in Luxembourg, internally there was some dissatisfaction about the way the survey satisfaction survey was conducted as well as widespread distrust of its results.
It is believed that the rogue elements within the agency are now planning to conduct an unauthorised counter-survey to find out how residents feel about the survey satisfaction survey, as well as an internal survey to see how the staff feel about the rogue survey.
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Originally published by RTL Today
