Study: Genetics play major role in whether we are willing to takesurveys

Carol Forsloff - Surveys help businesses and organizations make decisions and even form
the basis for certain decisions made by legislators or political
candidates, so knowing how and why people participate can be important.

This is election time when pollsters are taking surveys.  According to a

new body of research, whether you participate or not in a survey has
less to do what friends are doing than what a close family member will
do.

Genetics are found to play a key factor in our willingness to take surveys, a North Carolina University study has shown.

“We wanted to know
whether people are genetically predisposed to ignore requests for survey
participation,” says Dr. Lori Foster Thompson, an associate professor
of psychology at NC State.  She is the lead author of the present study.

Thompson went
on to say, with reference to her research, “We found that there is a
pretty strong genetic predisposition to not reply to surveys.”

Research was
based on 1000 sets of twins, some identical and some fraternal to
determine whether certain behaviors in one twin would be present in the
other.  The paper, “Genetic underpinnings of survey response,” will be
published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

 “We found that
the behavior of one identical twin was a good predictor for the other,”
Foster Thompson says, “but that the same did not hold true for
fraternal twins.

“Because all of
the sets of twins were raised in the same household, the only
distinguishing variable between identical and fraternal twin sets is the
fact that identical twins are genetically identical and fraternal twins
are not.”

 “We need to
get representative data in order to form accurate conclusions,” Foster
Thompson says, “for science and for business practice.

Organizations,
businesses and governments recognize the value of survey response so
they can understand how people relate to certain important issues.

It is important especially in politics, where pollsters like those in the Harris Online Poll, get opinions about how people think about certain issues of the day.

“A lot of research
has been done to evaluate how surveys can be written or presented to
encourage participation,” Foster Thompson tells us. “Much less work has
been done to evaluate the personal characteristics of potential
respondents – and the role those characteristics play in determining
whether someone will actually fill a survey out.”

According to
Thompson, whereas the present research provides helpful information, it
also raises other questions, “but basically we want to know why or how
genetics affect people’s predisposition to take surveys,” Foster
Thompson says. “Is the linkage between genetics and survey response
explained by personality, attitudes toward employers, or something else
entirely?”