My recent posts have spoken to the concept of screening participants and letting them down gently if they do not qualify for the current study. To continue in that vein, this post looks at a specific screening question appropriate for B2B marketing research. In this arena researchers often need to speak directly with individuals who have certain buying roles around technology. Invariably this will require a screening question or two in the survey design.

IT decision makers are a golden egg in the B2B realm. They control budgets for products, services and staff which makes them a primary target for survey research. Even if your contact list is chock full of IT professionals, it is wise to verify this with a screening questions such as the one below. This question focuses on the respondent’s primary job role.

Looking at the response categories the first one clearly separates out IT professionals who work in a formal IT department. A subsequent question or two may be needed if you desire to separate out executives, managers, and staff. The second category captures those who perform the tasks of an IT person, but may not be assigned to a specific technology department. The third category isolates developers and programmers, IT’s creative team. The fourth and fifth categories capture the rest of us.

Although this screener is meant to delineate our relationship with technology, it could easily be replicated for other departments with similar specialties such as finance and marketing if your research required. A good example would be a banking survey where the different roles within a branch or corporate office could be delineated and assigned a specific category.