Screened Out

When entering the United States as a foreigner, people are assigned by Immigration to one of three categories:

1. The fortunate ones with a permanent residence card, a.k.a. a green card. They can pass Immigration through the U.S. citizen line at the airport.

2. Those who have a visa. Immigration requires you to fill out an I-94, a small form with information on where you live and where you intend to stay.

3. Visitors from countries that have an agreement with the U.S. about a visa waiver. For example, if a Briton intends to stay for a couple of weeks on vacation, he doesn't need a visa. These visitors hop on a plane, and, while on the plane, they fill out the I-94W. The front is similar to the I-94, asking for residence and where you intend to stay. The back, on the other hand, contains a series of straightforward, yes-or-no questions:

A. Do you have a communicable disease; physical or mental disorder; or are you a drug abuser or addict?

B. Have you ever been arrested or convicted for an offense or crime involving moral turpitude or a violation related to a controlled substance; or been arrested or convicted for two or more offenses for which the aggregate sentence to confinement was five years or more; or been a controlled substance trafficker; or are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities?

C. Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were you involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies?

D. Are you seeking to work in the U.S.; or have you ever been excluded and deported; or been previously removed from the United States; or procured or attempted to procure a visa or entry into the U.S. by fraud or misrepresentation?

E. Have you ever detained, retained, or withheld custody of a child from a U.S. citizen granted custody of the child?

F. Have you ever been denied a U.S. visa or entry into the U.S. or had a U.S. visa canceled? If yes, when? Where?

G. Have you ever asserted immunity from prosecution?

IMPORTANT: If you entered "Yes" to any of the above, please contact the American Embassy BEFORE you travel to the U.S. since you may be refused admission into the United States.

I can assure you this form provides enough material for evening discussions among expats. The questions about mental disorders and terrorist activities are good ice-breakers. Also, hearing on the plane that you should have contacted the American Embassy before hopping on said plane has entertained thousands of tourists. I wonder about the validity of the responses the U.S. Customs and Border Protection get from these questions. If you have some mental disorder, is now the best time to admit that? If you worked for MI6 for 10 years, do you think the immigration officer would like to compare notes with you?

In market research, our surveys are slightly more respectful of the respondent's privacy, but then again, we don't have to secure a border. Even so, I often wonder about the value about one specific type of question:

Do you or does anyone in your household work in the following industry: [fill in client's industry]?

The theoretical purpose seems obvious:

1. If we test pricing for a new product, the client doesn't want the product or price options revealed to competitors.

2. We like to prevent competitors from seeing our methods; especially since copyrighting questions and methods is essentially impossible, it is very hard for us to protect our intellectual property.

3. Last, we might want to avoid respondents who have a professional affinity to those products and measures.

Regarding the last goal, in my opinion, people who work in this industry are part of the market. They might make their decisions differently than John Doe, but they are still part of the market -- and if the sampling method is appropriate, then they would be equally represented in the sample as they are in the population. Why would we want to exclude them? Sooner or later the product will be available in the stores anyways.

My greater quibble has to do with goals 1 and 2: people who want to understand what their competitors are doing would certainly not stumble over such a question. You can call me a pessimist (I prefer to call myself a realist) when it comes to my evaluation of the human nature, but I have a hard time believing that the people we want to keep out will sheepishly admit their industry. On the contrary -- I think we offer those people our research area on a silver platter with a big sign saying: WATCH OUT! If you work in any of the following four industries, listen now. The following survey is not intended to be seen by you, but if you click "no" four times, we will show you the hottest products and the deepest secrets!

Theoretically, we could make it a bit harder by having a long list of industries where only a few result in a termination of the respondent. But I am confident most people we want to keep out would know which industries are pretty safe bets to not be terminated ("education," "government," and "other" seem good choices). We might lose some respondents because they don't want to go through a list of 35 industries, but otherwise it won't do much good.

So what can we do?

Well, for starters, we might want to consider whether the survey really contains information these people wouldn't already have (if they already have it or could easily find it out, we're trying to solve a nonexistent problem). Maybe all we're doing is telling them things they know already while occupying 10 minutes of their precious time. Sounds like a fair deal to me: you lie to us and we take your time.

If there are really previously undisclosed pieces of information in the survey, we might want to choose an open-end approach where we do not disclose beforehand what industries we want to exclude (respondents could still say they work in education or government).

By asking respondents what industry they work in, we actually suggest there is some so-far-undisclosed information in the survey. If that is the case, we would attract less attention by not having that screening question in the first place. Removing it would also save a few seconds of all respondents' time and reduce respondent fatigue.