Survey questions that gave five choices and aggregated the results

Wonk that I am, to find a different approach to gather and present data gives me a glow. So, when I dug into the PwC Annual Corporate Directors Survey, I glowed. I fastened onto its methodology for the question on topics board members would like to devote more time to (See my post of May 8, 2011: Corp. Bd. Mbr., First Quarter 2011 at 10.).

For each of the topics the survey gave five choices (at 10 of the report): (1) yes, much more time and focus than in the past; (2) yes, but not a great increase from the past; (3) no change, it’s already a major focus; (4) no, I don’t expect any change; and (5) no, we will decrease our time and focus. The report combined the first two and in a previous post I remarked on the ranking of “Compliance and regulatory” as eighth out of nine.

But when you look at the data, three out of four respondents sought no increased focus on this because it is already a major focus. In fact, “Compliance and regulation” is next to the top in terms of current focus. Thus, aware now of the methodology, the negative implication I drew previously was wrong: directors feel they spend ample time on compliance and regulatory issues.