As per my post yesterday, I've pursued a bit more about the "research" from VitalSmarts, a company I'm not familiar with, which claims "that 13 out of 14 common workplace relationship problems occur far more frequently within 'virtual teams' (teams with members scattered across various geographies) than within teams located in the same building."
I wrote to the contact on the press release, first requesting the information promised in the release, "the full results of the study."
What I received in return was a document titled "Long-distance Loathing: Telecommuting damages morale and productivity," containing this description:
"METHODOLOGY:
The survey was conducted via online poll from in [sic] March 2009 by the authors of the bestseller, Crucial Conversations."
On further questioning, I learned that anyone could respond to the survey; there were no checks on whether the same person responded to the survey multiple times; there was no qualification of respondents, i.e. were they all admins or all senior people; and there was no identification of respondents by industry or by role.
The poll contained 22 questions, beginning with this one:
1) Do you have team members across the US or across the world who [sic] you work with on a frequent basis (daily, weekly, monthly)?
--Of 694 respondents, 24% said they didn't; 76% said they did.
Now I'm no statistician, but it seems to me if you're doing a survey on virtual teams, then those who don't participate in them probably shouldn't be invited to answer the rest of the questions.
Be that as it may, the next 21 questions were couched as follows:
Below is a list of common concerns people have about their co-workers. When you consider these concerns, have they been more frequent or severe with colleagues who share your building or with colleagues who are distant?
To which people were offered the following choices:
1) Not a problem
2) More of a problem with colleagues who share my building
3) More of a problem with colleagues who are distant
4) About the same
In my opinion, the "concerns" tend toward the immature ("saying bad things about you behind your back;" "lobbying against you with others") and, in my experience, are not typical of the kinds of problems virtual team members struggle with when working on serious projects. Maybe I've got this all wrong but when a "concern" is "not defending you when you're not around" and you're on a virtual team, when precisely are you "around?"
I'm a bit stirred up about this because it's the kind of "research" that gets snatched up by the press and promulgated as having merit, when, in fact, it is not really comparable to the kind of thoughtful work carried out by those who have diligently and seriously studied the topic.
Further, the press release--and the articles about it--concludes with a prescription for solving the terrible problems that virtual teams cause, which is not bad, but, I believe, explains why they've conducted the online survey, issued the press release, and mounted a publicity campaign: its purpose is to promote the book co-authored by the company's founders and board members, from which the Rx for the Virtual Team Virus derives. Said book, to the best of my knowledge, has nothing to do specifically with virtual teams, i.e. the term doesn't even show up in a search of the text.
Following me? The "research" is a trope for hyping the book. I'm sure the book is very good. It's just that it's no excuse for spreading what amount to rumors about virtual teams.
This just in on July 19, 2009: The person with whom I'm corresponding at Vital Smarts tells me that they employed "pathing," meaning that if someone indicated that they didn't participate in virtual teams in question 1, their responses were eliminated from the sample. Further, only one response per computer was permitted (which the Nancy Drew in me must qualify this way: I'm sitting in a room with three computers and an iPhone so theoretically, I could have responded four times and the survey instrument would not have known that).
Finally, on the press release's claim that "working remotely causes 243 percent more problems," I received this explanation:
Here is the response from the author about the 243% stat:
“That result is a sum of questions 1 through 13. Each of these questions asks whether the problem is more of a problem with co-located or with distant co-workers. We calculated the number of people who say the problem is more likely with co-located co-workers and compared it to the number of people who say the problem is more likely with distant co-workers. The result is that people are 243% more likely to have these 13 problems with a distant worker than with a co-located person.”
Someone with more statistical insight than I will have to parse this for me as in a number of instances the number of people saying the issue wasn't a problem at all was at least as great as those saying it was a problem either face-to-face or at a distance. I would think the results would then require some weighting.
I've invited the authors of the study to reply here. I hope they do.