Taking into consideration that many of the survey respondents are developers and consultants, many of their answers correlate with what they commonly experience with clients.

And we're equating "clients" with the general usership? No, relatively (very) few WordPress users are clients.

It's as much a bias-factor to give special weight to the constituency of users who are clients, as it is to focus on developers. We know 'right off the bat', that clients will amount to only some modest multiple of the developer & service-provider population who meet clients' needs.

"Clients" are a self-selected cohort who, broadly speaking, are attracted to the idea of paying money for hand-holding. And those who earn a livelihood from this cohort, actively select for & foster 'helplessness'.

"Clients" are by definition a sharply atypical, unrepresentative element of the overall WordPress usership.
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These remarks apply even more strongly to WordPress, than will be case with competing products such as Drupal or Joomla. Other website and CMS ware do not hold out to the prospective adopter, that "Yes, You, the Compleat Newbie, can install it in 5 Minutes! Your very own Blog! All by Yourself!". Remember?

WordPress deliberately & actively specializes in appealing to the unsupported user ... and it is they who will be the base-line cohort that needs to be examined.