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To me there is something vaguely dystopian about the very concept of an empathy “test”. If the test is stable and standardized, wouldn’t shrewd (and non-empathetic) careerists just study for the test and learn to simulate empathy?Personally I don’t trust questionnaires at all, especially when they involve self-assessment. I see no reason that a person’s self-conception would be accurate or useful.Only a robot relies on formal, explicit tests. To be a good judge of character, you can’t be a robot. You have to change things on the fly, so no one can predict what you are going to do. You have to assess body language and reactions. But you can’t formalize your criteria, because then the ‘actors’ win out.Also, I think empathy is a two-way street. If a profit-oriented company seeks “empathy”, it is typically for decidedly non-empathic reasons involving efficiency and profit. So asking people to be sincerely empathetic strikes me as deeply manipulative. What you are ultimately asking for is applicants who are capable of self-exploitation: they can ‘deploy’ their emotions and body language as tools to further their career, to the point that they even feel sincere about being an affective mercenary.I know this is extremely harsh language, but I use it because I’d like to jolt people into thinking deeply about what exactly their goals are, and what the goals of organizations are.

Would you answer honestly if Pew or Gallup called asking if your household has a gun? (if you actually own a gun)They’d get one of two responses.Hangup“A is singular.” HangupFrankly, I just don’t trust strangers on the phone asking me about guns that I may or may not own. I have no way to tell if they are who they claim, nor do I know what their agenda may or may not be. But sometimes I like to be a pedantic prick.The first time my doctor asked me about guns in the home, I asked to see the questionnaire. She handed it to me, I folded it up, put it my pocket, and refused to give it back to her. I’ve refused to answer those questionnaires ever since. If I feel unsafe in my home, I’ll remove the threat or inform the police. My doctor is wholly untrained to deal with or advise me on personal security, and to the best of my knowledge, none of my doctors know squat about guns (except one, whom I’ve seen at the range).I also don’t advertise to random strangers in public that I’m armed. It’s none of their business.

Before answering this question, I must explain a little known, almost secret fact about quantitative research.When it comes to future questions, the idea to ask a direct question and get a good answer in a survey is as intuitive as it is wrong.Surveys done by ticking boxes on questionnaires - online or offline - work reasonably well:if used for questions about facts in the present or not too long ago,if the question is phrased in a neutral fashion, andif the questioner is skilled enough to avoid the many distorting biases which can be triggered through ill-phrased questions. This is already quite a few ‘if’s.Putting future questions to a testIn one experiment we asked respondents to predict the outcome of a simple coin toss: heads or tails? Using a traditional survey with tick-box answers in random order, mixed amongst several other questions, dear reader, what do you think will be the result?Most laymen will assume that the survey produces 50/50 as an answer. This sounds reasonable, right?It is wrong, nonetheless. Here is what really happens: the average result from many such experiments is 65/35. In some cases it was as bad as 68% heads and 32% tails. Anybody who trusted questionnaires (as most people do) would now consider “heads” double as likely as “tails” which is obviously grotesque.We did a whole series of different future experiments and now know for certain that surveys - even if people think they answer to their best knowledge - are not to be trusted for future questions. This bias even multiplies when asking about future behaviour or intent of people, what shall be not only what will be. People think that they will behave like a much more ideal self than is realistic.Why so much quant research in news stories?Now to your question: Most journalist - like most laymen - do not know that they cannot trust questionnaires about future questions.Here is a journalist’s fantastic, attention-grabbing headline about our survey result:SENSATION: HEADS DOUBLE AS LIKELY THAN TAILS!According to renowned research company XYZ, a large-scale survey of 6,300 people from ABC showed that a 1-Euro coin toss yields double as many heads than tails. In a carefully designed bla bla bla…This only sounds grotesque for the coin toss. Future questions are normally much more complex - say about a political intent - which makes it impossible to recognise the error or manipulation.So here are three reasons why journalists may use much more quantitative survey data:An astonishing ‘result’ makes a sensational article, this is good for newspaper sales.Many sources may approach journalists with a quant survey ‘proving’ something with a survey which is in their interest.If a political party wanted to manipulate the public then they would show quant surveys to news media to lend credibility to their propaganda. Of course, politicians would not do such thing, so we are safe.How to spot misleading quantitative research?It is actually quite easy to spot untrustworthy quantitative surveys. Keep your eyes open for telling signs that a survey tries to manipulate you. Whatch out for “results” with the following patterns:“XY% say that such-and-such WILL happen!”“YZ% think that such-and-such SHOULD happen!”How to get reliable answers for future questions?Scientific researchers already use prediction markets to debunk fake research. A prediction market run by researchers from Harvard University had a 71% success rate of debunking prominent research results which were published in leading psychologic journals.Just like the Harvard researchers, journalists should use a free public prediction market to verify future questions. Once people are asked to bet - even just for play money - they will think much harder. In our example, once the heads/tail ratio diverges from 50/50 on a prediction market, the better trader will soon notice and trade to profit from such mispricing. Soon, the result will swing back to the truth.