Evaluating Communication Ethics: Surveys

EVALUATING COMMUNICATION ETHICS

Evaluating Communication Ethics

Surveys: Interviewing at Large

Imagine that you are an officer in your college’s alumni association, and you have been asked to interview other alumni in order to produce marketing materials that will help increase the number and quality of students applying to your school. Your association wants to show how much graduates enjoyed their school experience and how well they have succeeded in their careers.

You produce a simple one-page survey that asks alumni to rate their school and their postgraduate experience from poor to excellent, which you plan to mail to everyone listed in the alumni register. You are hoping that once all the responses have been tallied, you’ll be able to make declarative statements in your marketing materials noting the high percentage of graduates who rate their experience as “excellent.” But when you submit your plan and a draft of the survey to the alumni association, you are shot down. “We don’t want to hear from everyone,” says the alumni president. “We only want to hear from successful graduates who are working at Fortune 500 companies or who have made big names for themselves in the sciences.”

You are asked instead to create an in-depth survey and conduct it by phone with graduates who have donated more than $1,000 to the school in the past five years. You know that this will skew the results of your survey toward former students who love the school and who have been financially successful since graduating. The association is asking you to present this information as though these students are representative of all students. But you know that although the alumni association depends on successful and wealthy graduates for support, such graduates represent a minority of the students who have attended your school. You know that many students have gone on to successful and fulfilling, if less lucrative, careers in education and the arts. You are concerned that the skewed survey you are being asked to conduct will not paint an accurate picture of the school for prospective students. What are the ethical implications here?

Think About This

  1. Does your plan for a survey of all graduates present a more accurate picture of the school than a telephone survey with only the wealthiest graduates?

    Question

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    Does your plan for a survey of all graduates present a more accurate picture of the school than a telephone survey with only the wealthiest graduates?
  2. What about students who attended the school but did not graduate or who are not in the alumni rolls? Would leaving them out skew the results of your survey as well?

    Question

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    What about students who attended the school but did not graduate or who are not in the alumni rolls? Would leaving them out skew the results of your survey as well?
  3. Does it really matter? Remember, this survey is for material to be used in marketing. Do you think students will infer that quotes from very successful graduates mean that every student at the school goes on to a high-profile, six- or seven-figure salary career?

    Question

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    Does it really matter? Remember, this survey is for material to be used in marketing. Do you think students will infer that quotes from very successful graduates mean that every student at the school goes on to a high-profile, six- or seven-figure salary career?