"Please Rate the Following..."

Why is it that the minute you land on a website, often for the first time, you are asked if you want to participate in the survey about it. You have no idea at that point!

One particularly shocking survey came to light though an arts related site, offering £3000 for participants. It offered to increase this if one signed up to more surveys, with assurances of confidentiality and opt out/no obligation. The first survey had plenty of 'prefer not to say' or 'none of these' options and the questions were not too personal.

The second - the journalistic investigator in me couldn't resist - offered to 'know me more'. It wasn't wrong!! It began with a marital status question - always intrusive, and with 'no prefer to not say' box. It then asked about train travel (totally a jump), then support groups as I'd picked a fictitious marital status category which to them obviously requires a twelve step prgramme, and then a list of afflictions which made me gasp. There was no 'answer these if you feel comfortable' clause. It plunged straight in asking if I had vaginal dryness or penile erectile issues (it was tempting to tick both!). Why would I want to share this with a survey company? How could I possibly benefit and how could they possibly justify any right to ask, let alone need to know?

But such questions are not reserved for this Harris Interactive group. When writing a comedy on the matter, I realised that I couldn't think of any questions more intimate or impertinent than what already are asked in preemployment heath questionnaires. Not only do they enquire about every part of one's body and its possible malfunction, including 'rectal bleeding', but our minds and emotions too. Government departments have asked about therapy, which I consider a big Not Applicable to employers. And if, like the rest of the information it is not held against you or seen as a problem, why do they need to know?

It also assumes the conventional, i.e. dominant Western health system. Employers ask for your doctor's name and surgery, not your Reiki practitioner or your herbalist. It seems that the relatively young discipline of Western medicine is based on some errant philosophies: that taking samples of something is the way to see if it is healthy; that you chop out or off something that seems to not be; and - greatest - that the treatment of problems is so localised. If my head hurts, you don't take into account the rest of my body or my life, as complementary or alternative therapies do. Western medicine also seeks to call a problem a name, to put into a known category with a set of ideas about how to cure it.

Although having a free health service in Britain is a better system than some countries, the current set up also means that staff have little time with patients. And that means that they don't get to discover all the things they need to, and the bedside manner suffers because of the stress of overworking. I've met many bossy and often arrogant people who work in the health sector and who are clinical in more ways than one, which has leaked into television drama portrayal. The power we associate with doctors - the phrase 'trust me I am [one]' - is part of our culture, yet it is often undeserved. Power and respect comes not through a title but through the way others are treated - double meaning intended. To give such trust, including the intimacy needed to share body and mind with a professional and stranger, takes time to build and yet our national health service does not provide for this.

It can be seen as quirky or odd to reject the services of hospitals and surgeries, yet let us take a sociological step back. Thomas Schatz wrote of the social construction of mental illness. What is seen as well, sensible and powerful is also socially validated; and those ancient Eastern practices - much older and universal than Western medicine - are still on the fringes. Medicine involves great knowledge, skill, and for most, the genuine desire to help. But Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God book 1 says, at a corporate level, that the medical world has reasons to vest in keeping the current medical system - including the demand for it. I can understand some medical professionals feeling threatened by healing being offered through different channels, not only potentially making them obsolete but calling their long training and status into question. Doctors and especially consultants are considered one of our most intelligent, well regarded and well paid professions, yet a fuller healing is available through those with a very different training - perhaps more of an innate gift than having degrees. The integration and recognition of older forms of health into mainstream is to be applauded. perhaps retraining is needed: more than just the doctors and nurses, but those who expect their employees and friends to subject themselves to the same limited and often unsatisfactory system which they do.

The other personal area that both surveys and employers feel free to ask about is Money. What is your household income? What do you earn? It's a question that we often don't discuss and can be offended by. The polite preface such a query, if they ask it at all, with a 'would you mind telling me...?' And for many of us the answer is: yes. Those who ask frequently do not like the question reciprocated, let alone are willing to give the answer.

Many employers ask for your previous salary details - sometimes before they'll tell you what they will offer. But employers should pay what a job is worth, not judge you on past salaries. If you are capable of the job you are applying for, what other companies paid you should be irrelevant. The assumption is that if you have been poorly paid in the past, then why should you deserve a higher salary from a new prospective employer? That is a rhetorical question, as far as I am concerned. A human resources department may skim to the previous salary box before reading what your job involved. For those working for a charity, your salary may be very much less than the demands of the job deserved, or would have been paid elsewhere.

We do have a culture of judging by income, and wanting to put people in categories accordingly. It's even on dating sites - you can ask for your prospective dates to earn a certain amount in the matching criteria you set!

...Which brings me to drop down menus. We are asked to complete so much by checking a box in a preset category or clicking on one. It can be your religion in equal opportunities monitoring forms; your body type and attractiveness in a dating site; your past employment and qualifications. So often I wish to answer 'other', and often I am not given that choice.

I am proud not to fit those menus, to keep some of my vital statistics to myself and wants to be able to share or not freely: to my opening question, 'strongly disagree', 'not at all like me', 'never'!