If you are older you aren’t wanted by survey companies.
When I write about taking online surveys for cash
and prizes I am offering advice for everyone. Unfortunately, if you are a
senior citizen little of it does you any good. That’s because online survey
sites routinely discriminate against seniors.
While it is difficult to prove the case – after all you
can’t get into the survey companies’ data bases to check things out
scientifically – I’ve been doing surveys for a lot of years and there’s
certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence of the fact that seniors are just not
part of the demographic that survey sites want. Some may say that’s not
discriminatory, but I’m sticking with my opinion. Even if it doesn’t meet some
strict definition of discrimination, the survey sites exclusion of seniors is
more evidence of how companies who hire survey companies to shill for them are
willing to shove aside anyone or any group of people they think aren’t worth
the effort necessary to promote their products to them.
Testing The Theory
Am I just spouting off about this? I don’t think so. In
fact, I’ve conducted a test of my opinion to prove my point. Over the course of
several months I’ve responded to surveys – they always ask your age and/or for
your birth date – by indicating I’m over the age of 65. Yes, I didn’t tell the
truth but in the interest of reporting I think you’ll forgive me this one time.
In the vast majority of cases – approximately 75 percent of the time – that age
indicator resulted in my being excluded from the survey. Oh, they didn’t say,
“you are too old.” Rather they used phrases such as “the survey has just
closed” or “we’ve received enough respondents who match your demographic.” I
don’t think so.
So, you might ask – maybe the survey site’s response is
accurate; maybe they did get enough responses or the survey did just close. How
can I prove that it was because of my state age? Well, I took my experiment one
step further. All of the survey sites frequently offer the very same survey
over and over again. That’s because of one or two reasons. First, since most
surveys are nothing more than product advertisements the surveys are offered
again and again the same way in which you would see a television commercial
many times – sometimes for years. Second, a survey may be given multiple times
in order to obtain a large pool of respondents.
Because of this, I was able to reply to the same survey
several times. In my subsequent responses to the question of age I responded
that I was under the age of 65. So, I had the same surveys with two different
ages to use as my baseline. Guess what? When I answered that I was younger than
65 I was able to proceed with the survey (not that I wasn’t at times later
excluded for some other reason on some surveys). Two of the same surveys – with
age the only apparent difference on whether I was allowed to proceed or not.
Again, not exactly scientific – but pretty darn close.
So, what can be done about this clear anti-senior behavior
by survey sites? Unfortunately, not much if anything. Yes, if you are a senior
you can still take some surveys that don’t care about your age. But, you will
be very limited and your rewards from survey taking will be limited.
Is it fair, no. But, survey sites are in this for purely
cold, hard business reasons. That’s just the way it is.
