In Survey Research to Support Litigation, survey research expert witness Dr. Larry Chiagouris writes:
Survey research is used to provide greater levels of understanding in a wide variety of disputes. Issues such as consumer confusion, misleading advertising claims, disparagement, copyright infringement and trademark disputes can be better assessed as a result of developing and executing survey research. The purpose of this monograph is to aid attorneys in understanding what research standards and guidelines might be relied upon in their use of survey research.
Attorneys will often refer to documents well established within the legal profession. Those documents include: Manual for Complex Litigation, Fourth or material found within subject matter guides such as McCarthy on Trademarks. While these documents provide discussion concerning a wide variety of issues, these are not the only documents that should be considered during the planning, execution or evaluation stages of survey research.
Professional survey research organizations adhere to a variety of ethical or technical codes and standards that have been developed by leading professional research industry associations. In particular, standards or guidelines have been issued by the Association of the American Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), the Market Research Association (MRA) and the Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO). Two of these are the focus of this monograph because they address in depth issues that are not always completely covered in the usual and customary materials that attorneys are most likely to use in their work.