Aided Recognition

Within the context of survey research, aided recognition is a form of aided recall in which a survey respondent is asked if she or he was aware of something prior to being asked about it in the survey questionnaire. The stimulus that the respondent is asked about typically is the name of a company or of a product or service. In some cases, other than in telephone surveys, a picture can be shown as the stimulus. In telephone, Internet, and in-person surveys, audio can serve as the stimulus for the respondent.

The common form for measuring aided recognition is to use a closed-ended survey question along the following lines:

The respondent is asked to simply answer “Yes” or “No.” Sometimes a respondent is uncertain and says so to the interviewer. Thus the questionnaire can be precoded with an “Uncertain/Maybe/etc.” response that is not read to the respondent but that an interviewer can code if the respondent volunteers such.

Aided recognition is often used in branding studies as a measure of people's awareness of a company brand. Typically this is done by mixing the name of the brand that is the primary focus of the survey with the names of competitors in series of separate items. In this way, the survey can show how recognition levels compare across brands. It often is prudent to include at least one “bogus” brand name in the list of brands asked about to measure the baseline level of “Yes” saying among respondents, which is a form of acquiescence response bias. If a series of aided recognition items is asked, it also is prudent to use either a random start or a random order in presenting the items in the series to different respondents.

Aided recognition questions must be asked after any unaided recall questions are asked on the same topic; otherwise the aided recognition questions will bias answers to the unaided recall questions. Subsequent to the positioning of unaided recall and aided recognition questions within a questionnaire, branding studies often include image questions about the brand to get more information on the valence (positive or negative) associated with the brand. Logic dictates that any respondent who is not able to mention the brand under the unaided recall questions or to recognize the brand under the aided recognition questions is not asked any of the image questions.