About a year ago, a voluntary insurance company released a research report that they claimed was definitive in terms of employee preferences regarding enrollment methodologies. According to the company's research, employees absolutely preferred to learn about their benefit options and enroll for coverages through a web-based system. The study reported all the advantages the research subjects listed when explaining their overwhelming preference.
Within a month, another voluntary insurance company released a report that came to very different conclusions. Their research had proven that employees much prefer to learn about benefits and enroll for coverages through an individual meeting with a benefits counselor. The findings were touted as absolute and statistically valid.
It won't surprise most brokers to learn that the first company had invested heavily in a web-based system and did not offer individual, face-to-face enrollment support. The second company did, and actively promoted their individual counseling capabilities.
Unsolicited emails, online newsletters and vendor solicitations are crowding all of our in-boxes these days, filled with the secrets of success, the keys to higher participation, and the magic product combinations that will boost income. If only we offered this product or used that vendor or this new platform or the right carrier, our troubles would be over.
And they often fog the issue by presenting it in the guise of rigorous research that uncovered the secret. And the secret happened to be the product or service that they sell or manufacture. We know to be cautious about get-rich investment schemes but sometimes lack the ability to analyze claims made about our own business.
Sometimes, if the research is done by a third-party, it may seem more objective, but it isn't necessarily so. Research can have question and audience biases built in regardless of who actually conducts the study.
A key question for brokers (and all research consumers) is "Who paid for the research?" Most research is gray in that the data have ambiguous clues and conclusions are tempered by plusses and minuses. A report that promoters tout as absolutely clear and definitive rarely is.
Finally, conclusions that support our own biases (right or wrong) often seem very reasonable, while those that contradict our beliefs often appear flawed. We, like the promoters, tend to focus on data that support our thesis while de-emphasizing (or not reporting) contrary evidence.
Most brokers won't examine the research methodology to test the report's veracity, but remember to ask yourself questions that may alert you to potential problems.
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