[dghlsakjg]

This seems like such a convoluted way of measuring what happened.

There are very easy and very concrete ways to measure if businesses saw a drop in spending. You could look at tax receipts for the area, for one.

Instead they chose to ask peoples feelings about sales numbers...

[bombcar]

Way WAY too many "studies" are done this way - the famous "50% can't afford a $500 unexpected expense" study for example is a survey asking people if they could spend $500 without worry.

It's cheaper, but it's not better. True investigations watch results over time and compare actual items (that still have to be determined to be significant).