Self-Report Decay Curve

Self-Report Decay Curve is the rate at which what people say about their preferences stops matching what they do, measured in weeks from the moment of capture. Agencies treat survey answers as durable evidence, but stated intent degrades fastest exactly where budgets sit: purchase triggers, feature priorities, channel preference. The practical rule is to timestamp every primary-data claim and re-validate anything older than one quarter against observed behavior. An audit of Reddit's AI search found it disproportionately surfaces formal, highly upvoted comments while experiential language drops out of results, which means even the community signals agencies mine for research are a filtered sample rather than a neutral one. Pair conversational capture from Typeform with behavioral analytics, and treat the gap between the two as the finding worth billing for. A retainer built on a single survey wave is a retainer that expires quietly.