imverge

Survey asked if participants thought immigration 'threatens the purity of the country'

Aeroplan is deleting all data collected from a recent online survey and offering an apology to anyone who found it offensive, after it sparked a complaint from one of its members.

The survey included controversial questions that asserted immigration was harmful, suggested males were superior and that traditional marriage was the only way to form a family.



Aeroplan's owner, Aimia, hired a market research company to create the survey intended to help the company improve its loyalty program. However, Aimia says it failed to properly review the questionnaire before distributing it to members this month.



Some of the more than 80 questions probed members' thoughts on shopping and brands. But others asked their level of agreement or disagreement on provocative statements such as:

• Overall, there is too much immigration. It threatens the purity of the country.
• Getting married and having children is the only real way of having a family.
• The father of the family must be master in his own house.
• Whatever people say, men have a certain natural superiority over women, and nothing can change this.

Aeroplan member offended by survey asking provocative questions on immigration, male dominance | CBC News

ffsim

I participated in that survey. It was definitely a head-scratcher as I couldn't really figure out why those questions were being asked, but there was a very clear warning prior to being presented the more controversial questions. The participant had every opportunity to avoid offence at that time.

The thing that strikes me about this episode is Aimia admitting that "it failed to properly review the questionnaire before distributing it." Makes you wonder how they can draw any conclusions of any value whatsoever if they don't know the questions being asked. I wonder if maybe they think we enjoy the poor flight award availability, the barely functional website and all the scam charges.

MSPeconomist

IMO the problem isn't just the failure to review but basic judgment of at least one employee. I don't believe that some computer just created the questions on its own.: some employee either picked the questions or wrote the questions, although normally survey questions are carefully edited and often tested before being used in a mass survey. With or without a review, who would even think that asking such questions of customers is a good idea? IMO someone needs to be fired.

Cozmo456

A Russian troll wrote the survey. Perhaps Aimia wants to expand into Russia to make up for the AC loss.

RCyyz

It's head scratching indeed! At the same time, I can only think these questions were asked because there's a desire (at AE) to get in to political manipulation just like Cambridge Analytica.

For anyone who hasn't watched the Channel 4 investigations, I highly recommend taking the time to do so. It's interesting stuff while at the same time being equally exciting and deplorable. Cambridge Analytica is an entity that pushed the boundaries from an analytics perspective, but they also removed morality from their equation which made certain outcomes possible.

https://www.channel4.com/news/data-d...igation-expose

This AE questionnaire makes me think they are looking to their future (sans AC) and trying to reinvent themselves in a way that has dark overtones.

RCyyz

Per CBC:

So AE outsourced the survey to someone who basically couldn't care less.

The fault at AE lies with the decision to use CROP in the first place. One quick glance at their website indicates that they pride themselves on asking very charged questions. What value these questions have is worthy of academic debate but what use they would have in a corporate environment should be rather clear - none!

canadiancow

I also don't see the issue. Trying to find out if your customers believe X is not the same as the company believing X.

I know a lot of Canadians who would agree or strongly agree with those points. If that group makes up enough of Aeroplan's customer base, shouldn't they try to capture that audience?

RCyyz

Let's take the 4 sample questions published by CBC:

• Overall, there is too much immigration. It threatens the purity of the country.
• Getting married and having children is the only real way of having a family.
• The father of the family must be master in his own house.
• Whatever people say, men have a certain natural superiority over women, and nothing can change this.

How does any of this affect the strategic decisions made by a company that issues points?

In the old days, I used to take a flight or buy gas at Esso and I'd get points. I can't do that anymore so AE is trying to reinvent itself. That's fine, but do the questions above lead AE to start issuing points if I join the KKK? Or if I support anti-abortion outfits? Or if I join male superiority groups? (Do those exist?)

Based on the 4 questions above, how is any of the data of any use to AE?

ffsim

Thankfully not everyone pays for every work mistake they make with their job.

Exactly. Although actually knowing the questions being asked might help Aimia draw the right conclusion from the answers

canadiancow

My degree isn't in behavioral psychology, but my understanding is that you rarely get a true answer by asking the question you want to know the answer to.

So you come up with other questions where people think "what does this have to do with your product/service?", give you a true answer, which can be translated into the answer for the question you actually care about.

Look at "The father of the family must be master in his own house."

If you agree with that, then maybe instead of getting your spouse/children their own accounts and cards, they're all just using yours. That might be something Aeroplan would want to change.

But if you ask "Are you the only user of your Aeroplan card and account?", no one is going to say "No, I let my family use it too", because that's a violation of the program terms.

See my point above. Aimia may want answers to questions that can't be asked.

ffsim

C'mon, there were way more than those 4 questions. The CBC chose those for maximum impact because their story is about how inappropriate the survey questions were. I can tell you, there were questions of the exact opposite nature, too.

If you consider the entire collection of 80+ questions and not cherry-pick the ones that are the most controversial, you can actually draw pretty reasonable conclusions about the person taking the survey. Now, as I've already said twice, doing something of value with those conclusions is a totally different story.

RCyyz

Well that's interesting there were opposite questions too. As I said, it's evident that CROP is an organization that seemingly prides itself on asking charged questions.

But what's the (corporate) use of questions that are charged? Even with "opposite" questions, that just means the survey is asking charged questions; having pendulum swings does not make a balanced survey

If the goal of AE was to raise their profile, they've succeeded.

If the goal of AE was to try and gain some deeper insight in people who collect points, they need to decide if this is their way forward. I for one, disagree with the nature of the questions (as portrayed on CBC) and still cannot see any productive corporate use of this kind of data.

Stranger

I would go further. I don't particularly believe in answering surveys truthfully. I give the answers which I see as serving best the outcomes I would like to see.

(If I care to answer, that is. I don't particularly believe in working for free either.)

jazzsax

This is just AE's way of asking if people really feel that men should get first crack at J rewards!!!

Stranger

Shouldn't they know the answer already?