Are most surveys inherently biased? Could be

Tis the season to publish surveys.

It seems that the end of the year is the perfect time to come out with a survey. Typically these surveys are shall we say somewhat self-serving in that they are commissioned by companies that benefit to gain from the results, providing of course that the results indicate you had best sign up with this particular vendor or you are doomed to suffer the same fate as those losers cited in the survey.

So, in my inbox this a.m. are the results from no less than four surveys.

From Tata Consultancy Services, an outsourcing vendor, we find, according to Tata, one in three projects fail to deliver on expectations.

A full 43 percent of respondents globally suggested the Board accept IT project failure as the norm, and a whopping 77 percent of U.S. rspondents said their managers and the Board continued to provide financial support for underperforming projects.

Most common problems were overrun on time, on budget and a higher than expected maintenance costs.

The solution of course would be to go to an outside consultancy, like Tata, that in theory won’t get paid if they don’t produce.

I’m not arguing with the facts, I’m just saying a survey conducted by a company that has something to gain by the results makes me a bit leery.

Survey Number 2 by FMI, a company that does management consulting and investment banking for the construction industry, has discovered that despite the expanding use of Building Information Modeling [BMI], IT investment is still lacking in the construction industry.

However, the survey, not surprisingly, uncovered the fact that those construction companies that did use BMI were more likely to have juicy contracts to do “construction nationally or globally,” and they were “likely to have 50+ projects annually.”

Hey, I’m not saying that construction companies which adopt technology won’t have a better chance at succeeding, however, I would rather read these kinds of survey results from unaffiliated experts who have nothing to gain by the outcome.

Survey Number 3 from a British company, Databarracks, an online backup and recovery provider, has discovered the shocking truth that 84 percent of workers surveyed said they couldn’t do their job without the use of corporate data.

Also, more than 57 percent have lost an office laptop or handheld or USB stick in the past year. Mostly in a pub [Databarracks is a British company remember], or a bar or restaurant.

A full 63 percent of the respondents have at some point accidentally deleted data on the network.

And as you might have guessed the managing director of Databarracks finds the results of this survey, “frightening…”

“This research paints a frightening picture for the UK organizations. Almost every business, irrelevant of sector, is reliant on the information stored on its IT network to manage day-to-day operations,” said Peter Groucutt, managing director.

I assume Groucutt might want you to look at Databarracks’ solutions to solve these potential disasters.

Finally, a survey from AMI Partners, a more or less independent analyst firm, which does have many business clients. But then again, InfoWorld exists in large part due to advertisers as well, and I know my hands are clean so let’s give the benefit of the doubt to AMI.

The AMI press release headline reads, “SMBs in the U.S. to spend 16% more on security and storage this year.”

I think the point here is really that SMBs are spending more on security than enterprise-level companies.

Another interesting result from the survey is that while Dell was replaced as number one in sales by HP in the enterprise, among the SMBs Dell still is number one.

HP took second behind Dell for desktops, notebooks and servers.

HP was of course first in printer purchases.

In software Microsoft is number one. In telecommunicatins Cisco was the favorite. And, Google is the leader as “best brand” for online services.

I’ve provided as many links as possible in case you want to look more closely at the surveys.

Maybe your company needs to do a survey, too. You can contact one of the above mentioned companies and perhaps they can tell you how to do it.

Of course, I’m still waiting for the survey from a survey company that surveys how surveys boosted sales of companies that do surveys.