Screening Section for a Jobs-to-be-Done Survey
Constructing Powerful Jobs-to-be-Done Surveys - Part 2 of 8
The Screening Section
The creation of a JTBD-based survey starts with identifying the target respondents, which can include job executors, buyers, or members of the product lifecycle support team. Screening questions are positioned at the beginning of the survey to qualify or disqualify potential respondents. These questions act as a funnel, narrowing down to the intended audience and setting a higher standard for the quality of responses. Criteria for screening can include being in the target population, experience and knowledge about the job or topic, and absence of biases that could affect the study. It's crucial to ask the most relevant screening questions first to prevent respondent frustration.
Screening questions serve multiple purposes, such as ensuring respondents fit into specified sampling or competitive quota groups. These questions can also set the context for later questions, prompting respondents to consider their last instance of job execution when rating difficulty factors. Typically, 10 or more screening questions are included, most having termination instructions to filter out respondents who don't meet the criteria.
Possibly the most important consideration you need to make when developing the screening question is to make sure that the respondents you choose have actually done the entire job, and not just a handful of steps. If they have not performed the job, or have oversight across the entire job, they should be terminated.
Telco Example
Let’s look at a conflated consumption job and pretend that you are constructing a survey for people who have recently switched from one wireless telecommunications provider to another. How would you ensure that only people who have actually switched recently, and not people who are hypothetically considering switching, pass the screen?
Here are some example questions:
We were using a single survey to study 2 jobs, so the “Disqualified” instructions put the respondent on the alternative track. If this were only a study on switching, these questions would have been right up at the top and the would have been TERMINATED
That’s about it. Surveys are not rocket science. However the last few questions (which would normally be the first few) should show you that we don’t study hypotheticals. The respondents must have tried to get the job done recently. Most of the marketing research I had to reconcile to my results was 100% hypothetical. That’s insane, and a pointless expense, if you ask me.
If you disagree, leave a comment below 😉
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