If we take what she says at face value then we would believe that our current practice of showing products on models with their heads cut off was still a good idea.

But she was really distracted by the variety of poses and facial expressions. She just didn’t know how to articulate this.

I’m currently reviewing open ended survey questions and a lot of what people write is useless.

Likert scales aren’t inherently bad. It’s about taking the care to write good surveys that adhere to research best practices and having skilled people to the analysis.

Still–some of your comments are quite correct. But in reality, an experienced market researcher will often recommend a combination of quant and qual methods (depending on goals and budget); the default in quant research is not a questionnaire built largely around Likert scales.

We could go on forever, but the main thing I’d like to add is the issue of sample and population selection. Almost all surveys these days seem to be carried out so unscientifically that it probably doesn’t matter what questions you ask, the results will be invalid. I saw a survey last week that claimed that over 50% of businesses were actively using Twitter for their business! For crying out loud, 50% of all businesses aren’t even online yet. They’d surveyed a mailing list subscribed to mostly by digital marketing agencies, and assumed the results would be good for the whole business world.

What I like about your approach is that it generates qualitative responses, which can be examined individually. I’m not sure the question format in your examples is the real problem, I’d say that was lack of expertise in surveying. But unless you are a well trained survey professional, qualitative is the way to go. It’s just a safer weapon in inexperienced hands.