{"id":184361,"date":"2011-02-06T16:11:04","date_gmt":"2011-02-06T16:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.rm.gfolkdev.net\/?p=184361"},"modified":"2022-10-10T12:55:34","modified_gmt":"2022-10-10T12:55:34","slug":"surveys-in-the-news-valentines-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/surveys-in-the-news-valentines-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Surveys in the news: Valentine&#8217;s day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was a familiar type of email, and one that I&#8217;d usually just delete, but in the interests of this book I opened it. &#8220;Valentine&#8217;s Day Romance Survey Results&#8221; from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freshflowersandgifts.com.au\/\">Fresh Flowers and Gifts in Australia<\/a>. The same material is repeated on their web site, but I assume that it&#8217;s a seasonal promotion so here are the key points. I&#8217;m guessing that the panel referred to in the survey consisted of a<br \/>\ncouple of people in the Fresh Flowers and Gift&#8217;s marketing office. In<br \/>\nother words, they made it up. No worries, the survey was just for fun<br \/>\nand that comes across pretty clearly in the results. <\/p>\n<p>Read on and enjoy &#8211; and then I&#8217;ll discuss some more scientific surveys.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h3>An unscientific survey of Valentine&#8217;s Day views in Australia<\/h3>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;A panel of <strong>Australian women<\/strong>, all experts in the<br \/>\nfields of being women and receiving Valentine&#8217;s Day gifts, revealed<br \/>\ntoday some special advice for men seeking Valentine&#8217;s Day romance.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the main findings from the Valentine&#8217;s Day survey. <\/p>\n<ul class=\"list-ul\">\n<li>All women expect Red Roses on Valentine&#8217;s Day &#8211; especially the ones that say they don&#8217;t.<\/li>\n<li>The message on the card  must be romantic. Be prepared to say &#8220;I love you&#8221;. <\/li>\n<li>Diamonds may be considered as a suitable Valentine&#8217;s Day gift but should be accompanied by a red rose and a romantic message.<\/li>\n<li>Proposals<br \/>\n of marriage on Valentine&#8217;s Day are encouraged but should also come with<br \/>\n diamonds, red roses, a romantic message and a prenuptial agreement. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Australian men<\/strong> were asked their views on Valentine&#8217;s Day and receiving gifts.<\/p>\n<p>All<br \/>\n men admitted being totally baffled by the concept of giving flowers.<br \/>\nWriting a romantic message was really pushing the boundaries.<br \/>\nNevertheless, through years of observation, all men surveyed<br \/>\n have witnessed and experienced the powerful benefits of sending<br \/>\nflowers, especially on Valentine&#8217;s Day. Men understood sending roses on<br \/>\nValentine&#8217;s Day is considered a sound investment decision. Men&#8217;s views<br \/>\non receiving gifts held little surprise.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"list-ul\">\n<li>Food good<\/li>\n<li> Chocolate good<\/li>\n<li> Alcohol good<\/li>\n<li> Alcohol, food and chocolate great<\/li>\n<li>Card? Did it come with a card? <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3>A more scientific marketing survey in the U.S.<br \/><\/h3>\n<p>Have there been real surveys of views about Valentine&#8217;s day? Intrigued<br \/>\nby the fun survey above, I had a look. Mostly, they were about as<br \/>\nscientific as the Australian one &#8211; and less amusing.<\/p>\n<p>I found one that has received quite a lot of press and Internet coverage, released by a PR agency under the headline &#8220;Valentine&#8217;s Day Survey: Many Lovers Prefer Sincere Cards Over Costly Dates<br \/>\nand Flowers&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>And the announcment goes on to say:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;over a third of women (37%) appreciate Valentine&#8217;s Day cards with a love note<br \/>\nmore than a romantic date, flowers or candy &#8212; meaning guys, your wallets can<br \/>\nbreathe a big sigh of relief. In fact, even a third of men (31%) would prefer a<br \/>\ngreeting card with a love note over a dinner date, proving that many men&#8217;s<br \/>\nhearts are not in their stomachs&#8221;. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is both accurate and misleading. <\/p>\n<p>Accurate,<br \/>\n because this was a reputable survey conducted by a bona-fide market<br \/>\nresearch business, and they carefully include a paragraph explaining how<br \/>\n they did it in the press release. The headline is accurate because 31%<br \/>\nof the U.S. population is a lot of people, and they said &#8216;many&#8217;. <\/p>\n<p>Misleading,<br \/>\n because of the way that the press announcement is framed. When you read<br \/>\n &#8216;many&#8217;, did you think &#8216;most&#8217; or &#8216;less than half&#8217;? Would you think that<br \/>\nskipping the red roses in favor of a nice card has a good chance of<br \/>\nbeing welcomed by your loved one, or not?<\/p>\n<p>The press release doesn&#8217;t actually say: &#8220;you&#8217;ve got a good chance here&#8221;, but it implies it.<\/p>\n<p>In<br \/>\n fact, if your loved one is a typical member of &#8220;total U.S. population<br \/>\nages 18 and over&#8221;, then you&#8217;d have over 50% chance of messing up if you<br \/>\nwent for the card-only option for a female recipient &#8211; and the odds are<br \/>\nquite a bit worse if your recipient is male.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, your own<br \/>\nloved ones aren&#8217;t typical and you won&#8217;t be swayed by surveys like this.<br \/>\nBut it&#8217;s worth thinking about how statistics can be manipulated to make a<br \/>\n point.&nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; <\/p>\n<h3>A survey we can learn from in Japan<br \/><\/h3>\n<p>I was more impressed with another survey that I found on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.japan-guide.com\/\">Japan-guide.com<\/a>, a site that aims to explain Japan to foreigners who plan to travel there. They looked at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.japan-guide.com\/topic\/0003.html\">Valentine&#8217;s day and White day<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Japanese<br \/>\n women give their menfolk chocolate on Valentine&#8217;s day,<br \/>\nexpecting them to reciprocate with a gift on White day a month later. <\/p>\n<p>From<br \/>\n the point of view of the survey designer, the interesting part about<br \/>\nthis Japanese survey is the meticulous opening paragraph, which<br \/>\nexplains:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"list-ul\">\n<li>how many surveys they sent out, <\/li>\n<li>how many responses they received, <\/li>\n<li>the likely bias in the results. &nbsp; <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Bravo, Japan-guide.com! <\/p>\n<p>And to everyone, if you observe the holiday: happy Valentine&#8217;s day to you.<br \/> <br \/>\n<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was a familiar type of email, and one that I&#8217;d usually just delete, but in the interests of this book I opened it. &#8220;Valentine&#8217;s Day Romance Survey Results&#8221; from Fresh Flowers and Gifts in Australia. The same material is repeated on their web site, but I assume that it&#8217;s a seasonal promotion so here &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/surveys-in-the-news-valentines-day\/\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184361"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184361"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186536,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184361\/revisions\/186536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}