Today’s tortured questionnaire wording

I just have to share this in the hope that a reader will be able to enlighten me.  What could this possibly mean?

Not a provider that I would think of at first, but I probably would not consider it

OK, let me give some context. This is from a survey on business internet services. The researcher wants to know what would be my likely consideration for each of several providers if I’m choosing a new one. The choices are as follows:

• The only provider I’d ever consider
• One of the providers I’d consider above others
• One of the providers I’d consider above others
• Not a provider that I would think of at first, but I might consider it
• Not a provider that I would think of at first, but I probably would not consider it
• A provider I would never consider

If I think about it, especially with the ordering they’ve offered, I guess the research company wants to know if I would be unlikely to consider it (somewhere between “might consider” and “would never consider”).  But was there an actual phrase that they were trying to come up with?  Beats me.

It’s hard to tell whether they are losing any useful data from this poor question wording, other than running the risk of respondents terminating from confusing.

I saw this issue 11% of the way through the survey, so I wondered how bad the rest would be.  Fortunately there were no other major problems.

Idiosyncratically,
Mike Pritchard