Regular readers will know of my interest in “surveys” published by PR companies and greedily consumed whole by journalists.
 
On Monday the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror published a story claiming that British workers have 49 “weakdays” a year. These are days when we lack energy, daydream, and go through the motions without actually doing any real work. “Costs of working all weak” said the Express quite wittily.
 
Some repondents - 15 per cent overall, 22 per cent in Scotland and 18 per cent in London  - said they lacked energy every day.

The story derived from Pomegreat, a company that manufactures pomegranate-based drinks. No doubt they’re delicious. But the press release provided no information about how the survey was done. Under new guidelines issued by the Chartered Institute for Public Relations, PRs are supposed to make available to the public a range of information, for example:

• the client commissioning the survey
• the purpose of the investigation (reasons for undertaking the survey, experiment etc)
• the ‘universe’ effectively represented (all adults, voters etc)
• how survey participants were selected and method of interview (eg face-to-face interviews with British adults aged 16 years and over or Managing Directors in SME firms across the UK)
• the sample size, geographic coverage, fieldwork period and response rate
• what was measured and how data were weighted, if relevant
• the survey results, taking into consideration the statistical margins of error and overall reliability of the findings
• the percentages or proportions upon which conclusions are based, including the numbers from which they were calculated

This is quite demanding. (How do you define the purpose of a study if the purpose is simply to get coverage in less scrupulous newspapers?) I’d settle for just a few of these details, but Pomegreat provided none.
 
I approached the press officer whose name was on the release, who told me the omnibus research was carried out by Vision Critical.  It took place last week.  Vision Critical polls a statistically representative online panel of 2,000 people aged 18 and above, he said.  The research complies with all relevant codes of conduct.
 
Vision Critical is a Vancouver-based market research company with offices world-wide. It’s successful, apparently highly professional, and there’s no reason to doubt its methods. So why not include them?
 
Pomegreat said that the details had been given to the press agency that distributed the story. But they are not on the press release on the Pomegreat website. That would be remedied “today” I was told yesterday. No change so far, though.