A surfeit of old men?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

On 9 Jun 2022, at 10:30, Great Western Railway <greatwesternrailway@e.gwr.com> wrote:

Can't see the pictures? View online here.

We’d love to have you on board!
Dear Mr Ellis

As someone that has recently booked with us, we’d like to invite you to join our new online research community to help shape GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)’s digital future. As part of the community, you will be playing a key part in exploring and testing new ideas relating to your digital experiences when booking and travelling by rail.

The aim of the community is to gather feedback, share ideas, test new concepts and shape the plans of GWR and other rail operators across the UK^▸ (United Kingdom). As a member of the community, you’ll be invited to take part in online surveys, discussions and other fun and creative activities (although you are under no obligation to take part in individual topics). As a thank you for, for being a member of the community, you’ll be invited to take part in the monthly prize draw for a chance to WIN a share of £250*.

We’d really like you to be part of this, just click on the link below to take part in a short survey to tell us a little bit about yourself and register as a member.

The community is hosted and managed by InSites Consulting, an independent research agency, on behalf of GWR. InSites Consulting adhere to the Market Research Society Code of Conduct.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN
GWR Customer Research Team 

*The £250 monthly prize draw consists of 1 x £100 and 6 x £25 vouchers.
         
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First Greater Western Limited. Registered in England & Wales No. 05113733.
Registered office: Milford House, 1 Milford House, Swindon, Wiltshire SN1 1HL.

Except than when I asked to join ... giving year of birth, gender, and train companies used ...

Thank you for your interest.

We are sorry you were not able to complete your registration. Unfortunately, you did not fully match the criteria required for participating in this research study. Please know that your time and efforts are greatly appreciated. Your personal details, collected in the registration form, are confidential and will not be used for any research or commercial purposes.

Nice to be invited with no clue they will be selectively profiling, then be turned away!

[ChrisB]

Ahhh…..you too, eh?

I have already been rejected & have asked Jane Jones whether the criteria was agreed with the third party company & whether she thought I wouldn’t qualify. She said that she had personally had bo input into the criteria and I got the inpression this panel hadbeen initiated by First Group trains & not GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) specifically.

I am awaiting further feedback as to what the criteria was that I failed.

[chuffed]

If it wasn't for the ever loyal but dwindling surfeit of old men travelling on Firstgroup trains and buses, they wouldn't have anyone they could send the survey out to.....

[johnneyw]

Yep, same happened with me a few days ago.  I guess some of their target survey samples are easier to achieve than others.  It would be interesting to know which socio-economic characteristics they have aimed at and which are the most difficult to reach.

[CyclingSid]

Or are they concerned that "relating to your digital experiences when booking and travelling by rail" might not get the answers they want from this ageing demographic.

[Surrey 455]

I have received an almost identical email from SWR^» (South Western Railway - about). I haven't responded.

Dear David,

We’d like to invite you to take part in our new digital research community group relating to your experiences when booking train travel online or with an App. Whilst we understand that you may not have travelled for the past few months due to the current circumstances, we’d still like you to consider joining us to help shape the digital future of South Western Railway.

The aim of the community is to gather feedback, share ideas and shape the plans of not just South Western Railway but other rail networks across the UK^▸ (United Kingdom); Great Western Railway, Trans Pennine Express, Avanti West Coast, Hull Trains and Lumo.

As a member of the community, you’ll be invited to take part in online surveys, discussions, and other fun and creative activities every month or so (although you are under no obligation to take part in individual topics).

Once you’re a member of the community, thank you for taking part in the group, you’ll be invited to take part in the monthly quiz for a chance to win a share of £250!

If you’re interested, just click on the link below to take part in a short 3 minute survey to tell us a little bit about yourself and register as a member.

This community is hosted by a third-party research agency called Insites Consulting on behalf of South Western Railway. CLICK HERE TO JOIN.

Thank you in advance for your interest!

South Western Railway

[onthecushions]

We should be aware even from just watching the adverts in the media, how great a prominence is accorded to the various minority constituencies.

Thus if all of one's answers place one centrally within a majority group one will likely not be favoured.

The fashion in the equality field is to allow "self identification".

How you treat that is up to your own conscience.

OTC

[Ralph Ayres]

I'd be very surprised if it's because "prominence is accorded to the various minority constituencies". Much more likely that they want to get a representative spread of different respondents and as Grahame suspects, too many old(er) men with time on their hands have already taken part. Odd though to send out an email which so clearly reads as though they are actively inviting participation from everyone then turning some people away.

[grahame]

I'd be very surprised if it's because "prominence is accorded to the various minority constituencies". Much more likely that they want to get a representative spread of different respondents and as Grahame suspects, too many old(er) men with time on their hands have already taken part. Odd though to send out an email which so clearly reads as though they are actively inviting participation from everyone then turning some people away.

Getting a representative sample is a very real problem - been there.  What really pee-ed me off about this one is that there was no hint in the invite letter that they were profiling and rejecting after the initial questions - they sent an email personally addressed, telling you how important your input would be, only to reject you because "you do not match the criteria".

1. They should (IMHO^▸ (in my humble opinion)) have invited (if doing it by name) people to fill in a few details and see if they met the metrics for this survey.

2. If they write to customers by name, then say "you don't meet our metrics", do they really want our support, our journeys, our money to pay for those journeys??   I would like to think members could answer that question with "don't be silly, Graham", but I'm not so sure.  I'm reminded of SWR^» (South Western Railway - about)'s decision to withdraw through trains from Trowbridge and Bradford-on-Avon to London because "There aren't many commuters or school children using those services" - reason given by Claire Mann, their MD, ignoring a very busy service for people on personal business and leisure trips.  Perhaps the survey is only interested in people of normal working age, and pensioners are just a darned complaining nuisance?

[stuving]

Getting a representative sample is a very real problem - been there. 

Surely they were just following a standard recipe for recruiting a focus group, meant to minimise bias using Gallup principles. The less they allow people to pre-select themselves the better - ideally they would get a large initial sample with objective data on individual characteristics and then filter based on those and the pre-defined demographic profile. Of course some pre-selection is inevitable, and I wonder what their approach was to the under-representation of people who never volunteer for things like this.

So they used a standard letter with names filled in - hardly the height of programming sophistication; I'm sure you've done more devious than that, Graham. Could they or should they have explained more about why there was inevitably a high rejection rate among such as yourself? Probably yes, though it's not easy to do. They would need to know who might be upset and why ... maybe they should do some kind of survey to find out?

[onthecushions]

Perhaps there should be a paragraph appended such as:

"If you are a white male over the age of 50, are not conflicted, have largely been in full employment over your working life, are a home owner with significant pension contributions, used to drive Rover cars when they were available, thinks that the British Empire had many positive effects, now lost, thinks that the Malvinas should be British, don't own or play a guitar, haven't taken drugs, never read the Guardian, don't have an Arts degree, often wear a sports jacket and tie,...........etc etc, then you are unlikely to hear from us further."

(!)

OTC

[CyclingSid]

I think the "1066 and all that" version of a surfeit of malmsey would be far more preferable.

[Phil]

The whole thing begs the question as to why why GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) feel they need an "online research community to help shape the future" when they already have a perfectly good one right here.

[ChrisB]

It's not representative of the whole FirstGroup network?