🧢 Coach T's Recap
‘None of the above’ (and sometimes 'Other') is a small detail that makes a big difference in giving you a more accurate read on how your brand is really tracking.
At Tracksuit, we include a ‘None of the above’ option (and in some cases, ‘Other’) when respondents are asked to select from a list of brands, behaviours, or perceptions. This is a deliberate choice designed to protect the integrity of the data and ensure we’re capturing what people actually think and do.
When respondents feel forced to choose something that doesn’t reflect their true experience, this can lead to:
Inflated results for brands that aren’t genuinely recalled or considered
Misleading data on brand perceptions and behaviours
A false sense of progress when tracking movement over time
This is especially important in multi-choice questions. No list can feasibly cover every brand in a category, so ‘Other’ or ‘None of the above’ gives people a fair choice and keeps the data representative of the whole market.
Our goal isn’t to make the data look good, it’s to reflect the market as it really is. Whether the results show wins or work to be done, you can trust they’re grounded in genuine consumer sentiment and not skewed by survey design.