{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/survey-researchers/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Survey Researchers", "soc_code": "19-3022", "category": "Science", "us_employment": 8290, "median_annual_wage": 69460 }, "verdict": "COOKED", "risk_resistance": 26, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 7, "embodiment": 3, "liability_shield": 1, "trust_premium": 6, "judgment_accountability": 9 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "A 7 rather than a 12 because item wording, open-end coding, weighting scripts, and topline write-ups — the bulk of billable hours — are all reproducible by a model, and the genuinely resistant parts (choosing between an address-based frame and a nonprobability panel when coverage is broken, judging whether a 4% response rate estimate can be published at all) are a small slice of the week rather than the spine of it.", "embodiment": "A 3 rather than 0 acknowledges the occasional intercept survey, cognitive-interview pretest, or field-interviewer training session, but the job is otherwise Qualtrics, Stata/R, and a laptop, with no equipment to handle and no site to visit.", "liability_shield": "A 1 reflects that nothing gates entry — no state license, no PSTAT-style credential requirement, no signature block on a deliverable — and AAPOR's Transparency Initiative and Code of Professional Ethics bind by disclosure norms and reputational sanction, not by any statute that could name you personally.", "trust_premium": "A 6 rather than 2 because ongoing government and tracking-survey contracts do reward a known methodologist who understands a client's frame and question history, but procurement is competitive and buyers are purchasing the estimate and the margin of error, not you — swap researchers mid-contract and the client barely notices.", "judgment_accountability": "A 9 sits in the discretion band because the real calls — post-stratification raking targets, whether to weight a nonprobability sample at all, how to flag straightlining, what caveats go in the methods statement — are yours and are second-guessed by reporters and clients, but they run against established AAPOR and Census guidance and a bad choice yields a criticized poll rather than an injury or a lost case." }, "rationale": "The daily work — drafting questionnaire items, coding open-ended responses, cleaning datasets, running weighting and crosstabs, writing topline reports and slide decks — is exactly the text-and-tabular pattern work current models handle at usable quality. What resists is sampling-frame design under coverage error, deciding whether a nonresponse-adjusted estimate is defensible enough to publish, and owning the methodology when a client or reporter attacks the numbers. There is no license, no signature requirement, and buyers rarely pay for a relationship with the researcher rather than the finding.", "outlook": "Expect fewer generalist survey researchers by the mid-2030s, with the work concentrating into a smaller methodologist tier at panel firms, federal statistical agencies, and academic centers who own sampling and error decisions.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift is genuine here: if item drafting, open-end coding, weighting scripts and topline decks are fully automated, what remains is sampling-frame construction under collapsing response rates, mode-effect adjudication, and detecting AI-generated or bot 'fraudulent respondent' fill in online panels — a problem already forcing panel vendors (Cint, Dynata) to add human-designed fraud detection. That residual is a smaller but harder job.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "If federal statistical policy hardens the OMB Statistical Policy Directive No. 2 / Information Quality Act regime to require a named, credentialed methodologist to attest to the methodology of any survey used in a federal information collection or regulatory record — analogous to how a named responsible official signs OMB clearance packages — a signature requirement would exist where none does. Watch also AAPOR Transparency Initiative disclosure becoming a contractual condition for media publication rather than a voluntary badge.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "If polling aggregators, media standards bodies, or litigation-support use force a named human to own the publish/don't-publish call on nonresponse-adjusted estimates — e.g. courts continuing to require a testifying survey expert whose methodology survives Daubert challenge in trademark and class-certification cases, a role that cannot be discharged by an unnamed model output.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Narrow route only: if buyers begin paying specifically for attestation that data came from real humans and was analyzed by a named methodologist, as a defense against synthetic-respondent contamination and 'AI-simulated panel' vendors. This is trust in a verifiable warranty, not in a relationship, so the ceiling is low.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "Even with all levers, this stays in the 40s. The occupation is tiny (8,290), has no license to capture, and its core deliverable is a number that clients evaluate on plausibility rather than provenance. Cheap synthetic-respondent substitutes suppress the trust premium from the other side: some buyers will accept simulated panels precisely because they are cheaper, which shrinks the market rather than raising the price of human work." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 11270, "wage": 54270 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 11690, "wage": 57700 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 9930, "wage": 59170 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 10350, "wage": 59870 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 8850, "wage": 59740 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 7880, "wage": 60410 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 8190, "wage": 60960 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 7720, "wage": 63380 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 8290, "wage": 69460 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -26.4, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "industrial-organizational-psychologists", "title": "Industrial-Organizational Psychologists", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 41, "median_wage": 193950, "overlap": 78, "skills_to_close": [ "Operations Analysis", "Science", "Monitoring", "Social Perceptiveness" ] }, { "slug": "management-analysts", "title": "Management Analysts", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 37, "median_wage": 101860, "overlap": 73, "skills_to_close": [ "Monitoring", "Social Perceptiveness", "Systems Evaluation", "Coordination" ] }, { "slug": "business-teachers-postsecondary", "title": "Business Teachers, Postsecondary", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 42, "median_wage": 99080, "overlap": 72, "skills_to_close": [ "Instructing", "Learning Strategies", "Monitoring" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }