Rincon & Associates
Is Mayor Rawlings Hiding Behind Inflated Satisfaction Ratings of Dallas Residents?
“Dallas residents generally say they’re more satisfied than people in many other cities.” 
According to the Dallas Morning News, that is the response that Mayor Rawlings gave to challenger Marcos Ronquillo during their recent debate at the Belo Mansion when Mr. Ronquillo challenged the Mayor’s misplaced priorities on the Trinity toll road issue. As Mr. Ronquillo asserted, it makes little sense to make such an expensive investment of questionable value given the evidence that the City’s urban core was crumbling – the third highest poverty rate in the nation, a public school system beset by many problems, and thousands of pot holes that residents endure on a daily basis.  But are Dallas residents really more satisfied than people in other cities?  A closer look at how these satisfaction ratings are produced should raise some eyebrows.
We are all accustomed to hearing of efforts to inflate performance ratings – colleges leaving out the test scores of athletes, and school districts omitting or doctoring the test scores of low performers – all efforts to inflate performance and deceive the public. Although less obvious to the public, opinion polling firms also use questionable practices to distort survey results.   In reviewing the survey reports for the City’s satisfaction ratings, it turns out that the ratings are inflated because segments of City residents who are the most likely to receive poor services are excluded from the surveys. Curiously, for several years now the City has awarded the contract for satisfaction surveys to the same survey company that uses the same flawed methodology to produce the same inflated ratings. Really makes you wonder.  The reports are available to the public for their own independent review.

Mayor Rawlings, you owe the public an explanation about the manner in which these satisfaction ratings are produced. More importantly, you cannot hide behind inflated satisfaction ratings that have little credibility.  The public deserves to get a more reasoned explanation about your willingness to overlook the City’s crumbling infrastructure while you continue to promote the questionable investment in the Trinity toll road.
Does Dallas Need a Mayoral Election This Year?
It’s an odd question to ask indeed, but perhaps not so odd if you have kept up with recent news stories about this year’s Dallas mayoral election. Several recent stories in the Dallas Morning News, for example, continue to praise Mayor Rawlings for the programs that have been initiated during his tenure as Mayor of Dallas, and his campaign fundraising success in comparison to his one challenger, Marcos Ronquillo. The DMN has made no secret about its love affair with Mayor Rawlings, and that a second term would be a piece of cake for the mayor. 

But the stories did not stop there. One rather bold DMN columnist stated that “Marcos Ronquillo has a zero chance of being elected” as mayor of Dallas. Yet another story announcing Ronquillo’s candidacy for mayor was placed next to the Obituary section of the DMN.  Of course, this was probably just a coincidence.

While it may be obvious to the Dallas Morning News staff that Mike Rawlings is destined to win the next mayoral election, I believe that Dallasites are smart enough to make up their own minds about who our next mayor should be. With voter turnout rates at historic lows, it doesn’t make sense to discourage voter participation by telling voters that the mayoral election is a done deal.

The voting public needs to understand what the mayoral candidates have in mind for improving the quality of life for City residents. The subjective opinions of media pundits should not substitute for a series of well-planned public debates that would require the candidates to address important issues in their own words. Once scheduled, the candidates should embrace the challenge and not avoid open debate.
Following are a few questions and issues that I would personally enjoy hearing the candidates address in a public debate:

Trinity Tollway: Is there any scientific evidence that Dallas needs the Trinity tollway as a transportation solution? Are there any scientific polls that tell us whether Dallas residents favor or oppose this tollway? Wouldn’t it make better sense to first upgrade our local streets, bridges and highways which are suffering from a lack of maintenance and increasing traffic?
Education: Mayor Rawlings stated in a recent DMN story that Dallasites “do not value education.”  What evidence allows you to make such a profound statement? How does this conclusion fit your role as the self-proclaimed “Education Mayor?” 
Poverty and Unemployment:  Efforts to remediate poverty and unemployment often focus on helping people improve their job skills, business plans or personal skills. However, poverty and unemployment also result directly from the loss of millions of contract dollars that leave the City of Dallas every year to companies located outside of the City of Dallas. These lost dollars contribute nothing to our local economy. Moreover, the City’s poverty rate is among the highest in the nation. As mayor, what plans do you have for awarding more contracts to local business firms and bringing more jobs to City residents?

Fundraising Roadblocks: Current City policy places a $5,000 cap on the amount of funds that a mayoral candidate can raise from any one donor, although the policy does not apply to the incumbent mayor. This policy clearly gives the incumbent mayor a decided advantage in fundraising. How does an incumbent mayor justify accepting donations larger than $5,000 when it clearly creates an uneven playing field for other candidates?

Of course, the notion of not having a mayoral election this year is ridiculous. But equally ridiculous are efforts by the media that discourage voter participation by suggesting that the election outcome has already been determined and that some candidates have a zero chance of being elected. Perhaps the media pundits can find something more useful to do with their time rather than discouraging voters from participating in important elections.

The Texas Recipe for Muting the Hispanic Voice in Public Opinion Polls


If you are a tax-paying Texas resident, should your opinion matter in decisions related to publicly-funded programs or services in Texas?  Of course, you may say, the opinions of all Texas residents are important.  But one Texas state agency thinks that it is acceptable to exclude Spanish-speaking Hispanics from state-funded public opinion polls that are used to decide how tax dollars are spent.  I would like to share the details of an actual case study that vividly illustrates how one Texas agency is being allowed to silence the voice of Texas Hispanics in its public opinion polls.
The State of Texas has plans to spend billions of dollars to improve their transportation system, including the possibility of high speed rail. To ensure that the improved system meets the needs and expectations of Texas residents, the Texas Transportation Institute has the responsibility for conducting important surveys of Texans that reside in specific geographic areas, or corridors, that are likely to be impacted by these improvements.
A recently released report by the Texas Transportation Institute for the first of these two surveys, conducted during the Fall of 2012, provides concrete evidence that the voice of Texas Hispanics was muted by the survey planners.  Indeed, Hispanics represented only 20 percent of the survey respondents, despite their current representation of 38 percent in Texas (American Community Survey, 2011).  Even worse, only 19 percent of the few Hispanics included in the study were interviewed in Spanish – which compares poorly with other state surveys that have shown that 50 to 67 percent of Hispanics prefer a Spanish-language interview.
How could this occur, especially when the study design was reviewed by a “panel of experts” at the Institute?  A careful review of the study methodology reveals several missteps in the planning and execution of this survey:

  • The 16,000 households selected as respondents received only an English-language version of the survey.
  • The cover letter that was included with the English-language survey was provided only in English, and did not offer respondents any support to complete the survey in another language.
  • A question that asked respondents to identify their race-ethnic background provided only one ethnic identifier for Spanish-speaking respondents — “Hispanic” – which could partly explain the under-count of these respondents because other labels are often preferred over the “Hispanic” option.
  • A call center was supposedly set up to receive incoming calls from survey respondents that had questions or needed Spanish-language support. But this call center probably received few calls from Spanish-speaking respondents since the cover letter did not provide the needed contact information.  Moreover, the report did not include a copy of the Spanish-language telephone survey that was supposedly used by the survey vendor’s call center to capture incoming calls by the survey respondents.  
  • The study design required that automated advanced calls (or “robo calls”) be made to the selected households prior to the survey mailing.  Automated calls are a recognized nuisance from telemarketers and political campaigns that often discourage response rates to legitimate public opinion polls.
  • The report indicated that the survey “participation rate” was 34.6 percent – a rate that appears subjectively created and not recognizable by the American Association of Public Opinion Research (2011).  Instead, the overall survey response rate was more likely to be a much lower 9.7 percent (1,559 completions /16,000 invited participants) – not surprising given the recognized shortcomings in the methodology.
  • While the vendor acknowledged that Hispanic respondents were significantly under-represented and non-Hispanic whites were over-represented, no explanation was provided about the potential causes or consequences of this imbalance.
  • The fact that the survey planners ignored a previous warning about the potential flaws in the survey methodology suggests that the poor survey outcomes did not result from just simple carelessness.

         To make matters worse, the same survey vendor was awarded a second contract to conduct another public opinion poll of Texas residents using the same flawed methodology.  Why are state officials allowing such flawed practices to take place, especially at a time when the state’s population is being heavily impacted by the growing Hispanic population?

As one of the vendors that competed for both survey contracts, Rincón & Associates LLC monitored both competitions with some concern. In both competitions, state procurement staff decided to award the contract to the lowest bidder, which may not have been the brightest decision given the poor study outcomes.  As both studies required a mixed-mode survey methodology that few U.S. companies were capable of executing, more weight should have been given to proven experience using this specialized methodology with diverse communities in Texas. Procurement staff did not have to settle for the lowest bidder as other Texas vendors were ready, willing and able to conduct both studies.
Fortunately, an investigation was initiated on March 3, 2013 to find out why a state agency like the Texas Transportation Institute is allowed to deliberately design a study that minimizes the participation of Hispanic residents, especially Spanish speakers.  The outcome of this investigation is important because it could either (a) allow other state agencies to exclude Spanish-speaking Hispanics from state-funded studies, or (b) raise the standards of research for all state agencies to ensure that all state-funded studies provide adequate Spanish-language support.
The practical significance of this issue cannot be over-stated. Spanish-speaking residents are often the most likely to be overlooked in the delivery of public services, the most likely to receive the lowest quality services, and show distinctive attitudes or values that differ significantly from English-speakers.  Thus, excluding Spanish-speakers from opinion polls can lead to more positive satisfaction ratings than is actually the case, and result in erroneous public policy decisions.
It is time to require a higher standard for public opinion polling in communities that are linguistically and culturally diverse. Although professional research organizations have always defined quality and ethical standards for the research industry, it is apparent from the case just discussed that public agencies may not feel the need to follow these guidelines.  Following are a few ideas suggested from our experiences with public agencies like the Texas Transportation Institute:
  • Research firms that compete for opinion polls in the public sector should be required to produce evidence that they have the staff, facilities and past experience to conduct polls in linguistically and culturally diverse communities. If a research firm does not produce a representative sample of such communities in a contracted study, they should not be rewarded with another contract that utilizes the same flawed methodology.
  • The committee members convened by public agencies to evaluate research proposals may not have the expertise to judge these proposals in terms of their adequacy for diverse communities. The inclusion of experts with experience in conducting polls in diverse communities may have prevented the missteps in the Texas A & M studies.
  • In the haste to award a contract to the lowest bidder, proposal evaluators do not regularly check the references provided by the different bidders, but oddly enough still find a way to rate the relevant experiences of the bidders without this information. Prior to contract award, an audit should be conducted to ensure that such references were verified for all of the vendors that submitted a bid in such competitions.

       It is unclear that the State of Texas got the “best value” by selecting the lowest bidder from outside of Texas. Indeed, what is the economic benefit to Texans when a contract is awarded to a non-Texas vendor whose payrolls, taxes and local spending for goods and services will only benefit another state? 

Legislators and advocacy organizations, especially those that represent the needs of Texas Latinos, should show their concern about public opinion polling practices that minimize or eliminate the voice of the constituents that they represent. Can we afford to remain silent on this issue? 
The more conservative members of the Texas community may believe that all public work should be conducted only in English, and that no special accommodations should be made to non-English speakers. Unless we are willing to also exempt non-English speakers from the payment of taxes as well, then I believe that they should be given the option of voicing their opinions on topics that impact their quality of life.  Although many Hispanics and Asian residents have proficiency in English and their native language, about 50 to 70 percent of these residents still prefer to express their opinions in their native language.  By providing the appropriate linguistic options, public opinion researchers are more likely to establish rapport, increase response rates, and obtain more valid responses to their questions from ethnic respondents – all desirable outcomes for high quality research.     
Texas public agencies, especially the Texas Transportation Institute, must be required to raise their standards when conducting opinion polls of Texas residents, and legislators must take a more assertive role to ensure this outcome. We cannot afford to bury our collective heads in the sand on this issue.

National Poll on Arizona’s Immigration Law May Be Misleading

A recent national poll released by the Pew Research Center (5-12-10) reported widespread public support of Arizona’s new immigration law — a resounding 73 percent of the survey respondents! Headlines such as these, reinforced by the scientific credibility of an established polling organization, undoubtedly adds more momentum to the call for similar laws in other states.

Is the national mood really that supportive of Arizona’s new immigration law? Not being one to embrace polling results uncritically, I reviewed the study methodology and discovered that the entire survey was conducted in one language: English. Let me explain why this bias seriously limits the usefulness of the poll results.

Having conducted studies of multicultural populations over the past 30 years, I can assure you that two-thirds of Hispanics and 80 percent of Asians prefer to communicate in their native language when provided the choice. When a poll that includes these segments is conducted only in English, the results are predictable: lower response rates, less valid information, and more missing data. More importantly, because these respondents are more likely to be foreign-born, their exclusion from the Pew study has no doubt also inflated the reported level of public support for Arizona’s new law.

One only has to wonder why the Pew Research Center decided to address such a controversial topic in a manner that silenced the very voices that might have shared a different point of view about Arizona’s new immigration law.

Segmenting Multicultural Consumers: Old Dinosaurs Die Slowly

Eventually, any organization that plans a marketing program comes to grips with the realization that their product or service cannot please everyone. Consequently, the need to define a target segment – those customers whose needs are most likely to be satisfied with a product or service – becomes a critical decision for the marketing program. Indeed, it makes little sense to introduce a product and spend significant advertising dollars only to discover later that the customers that you had hoped would buy the product are not interested.

Although market segmentation is a well-established concept in the marketing world, I am often amazed at the many companies who invest considerable financial resources to launch a multicultural campaign with little more than their own personal insights or advice from ethnic employees to guide these campaigns. To such marketers, segmentation research is not a priority because, for all intents and purposes, ethnic consumers tend to think alike, speak the same language, watch similar media, desire the same products, and shop at similar places. Ironically, when the campaign struggles or just fails, consumers are readily blamed for their lack of interest.

Even marketers who understand the need to segment multicultural consumers have been misguided by the industry’s preoccupation with language segmentation or “language buckets,” as I like to call it. Language buckets are created from responses to questions about the language that a person speaks most often at home. In the case of Hispanics, the language buckets typically used are Spanish all the time, Spanish most of the time, Spanish and English equally, English most of the time, and English all of the time. Marketers often use these language buckets to select a segment of Hispanics that they believe will be more responsive to their advertising campaigns, such as Spanish-dominant Hispanics (i.e., speaks Spanish all the time or most of the time). Despite the often biased and self-serving nature of their research, Spanish-language advocates have been successful in convincing Corporate America to spend nearly 90 percent of all Hispanic-targeted media expenditures on Spanish-language media – quite a remarkable achievement given that 60 percent of U.S. Hispanics are native-born and primarily use English-language media. It is not difficult to understand why some industry stakeholders would not want to change how language segmentation is currently practiced.

Nonetheless, choosing potential customers based on their self-reported home language speaking skills is problematic for two important reasons. First, it makes little sense to select a target segment of consumers based on their language abilities without first determining whether a product or service will meet their needs – like putting the cart before the horse – a practice that overlooks other consumer segments that may also find the product appealing. As a case in point, it seems reasonable to assume that most Hispanic homeowners need home improvement supplies, regardless of their language skills. Rather than focus on Hispanic consumers in a specific language bucket, it makes more sense to identify segments of Hispanic homeowners according to their propensity to buy home improvement supplies, and then design the marketing mix that reaches the desired segments effectively – which may include a combination of English and Spanish-language media. The home improvement company could clearly lose sales if their advertising agency recommended a specific linguistic strategy without first understanding the home improvement needs of all Hispanic consumers and then selecting the most desirable target segment.

Secondly, it is disturbing although not surprising to observe how the marketing industry has embraced such a vague and simplistic concept as home language usage to segment Hispanic consumers. The credit goes to The Nielsen Company for popularizing the use of language buckets to segment Hispanics. Nielsen sponsors national telephone surveys each year of U.S. Hispanics to create the needed information for their television ratings, and shares these universe language estimates with other research firms like Arbitron to compare or adjust their language data on Hispanics.

But the language behavior of Hispanics is not as simplistic as The Nielsen Company would have us believe. Based on various studies of U.S. Hispanics, our research shows that the language that one speaks at home varies considerably within any one Hispanic household – it depends on the subject matter under discussion, the age of the individuals engaged, their country of origin, the task at hand, and general proficiency with the language. In a typical Hispanic household, Spanish or English may be used when talking to specific family members but may take a different path when viewing television, completing homework assignments, listening to radio, playing games, talking to friends, and other activities. Because the language that one speaks at home is influenced by many factors, it lacks the stability needed to reliably segment Hispanic consumers and highly questionable when used to adjust television and radio ratings.

Language usage among multicultural consumers can lead to some unexpected surprises. In recruiting consumers for focus groups, we have learned that consumers who speak proficiently in one language do not necessarily know how to read or write in that language. In telephone interviews, we find that respondents often over-state their proficiency in one language as they try to impress the interviewer with their language skills – a social desirability response set. A more valid and practical measure of language ability can be achieved by being more specific about the language skill needed for a particular task or situation. For example:

  • How often do you speak English when talking to friends?
  • How often do you read Spanish when reading a newspaper?
  • How well did you understand the English-language advice provided by your doctor?

Going forward, I believe that multicultural marketers should re-evaluate their campaigns to ensure that they have taken the appropriate steps to identify their target segment(s), and that their marketing strategies are aligned with the needs of the segments that appear the most attractive. Although language segmentation has been a popular way to identify target segments, the quality of the language data used is suspect and distracts attention away from more useful segmentation bases such as product usage, benefits, and lifestyles. Level of acculturation, which is typically defined by language usage and country of origin, has also been used in the past to understand and segment multicultural consumers; however, it has the same potential as language segmentation to mislead marketers by focusing on a specific linguistic strategy rather than one that is based on product consumption.