Finally, the best antidote against having respondents gravitating towards the neutral point is to make sure that we show the questions to those who can really answer them. With the help of skip logic, we can design surveys that filter out respondents with no experience, knowledge or interest in the subject being rated. In my Blackberry example, they could have asked me first if my request needed regular updates, and if that was the case then ask me to rate my satisfaction with it. Most likely, the researcher that designed the Blackberry survey was trying to make the survey shorter, but I still could have introduced measurement error, if I hadn’t seen the “Not Applicable” option at the end of the scale, which I almost didn’t notice at first. You may have guessed by now in which camp I am. Survey questions should be as close as possible to the way respondents would naturally answer them in real life. Sometimes we need to get there in several steps by filtering out those who can’t answer, but sometimes we just have to give them the option to be neutral. -