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Explore industry trends, research methods, and tips for your own research projects in the Versta Research Blog. All opinions are our own, and some may change over time.
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One of the devilish problems with statistics in market research is that we deal with probabilities rather than simple yes/no answers. But you, as a business person, need to make clear-cut decisions: Should you launch the product, yes or no? Which one name should you choose for your new service? Which three areas should you…
For some reason I’m always a little surprised that people tell the truth on surveys. I like to think of my “healthy skepticism” as a professional asset, because it forces us to check and double check, corroborate and triangulate. Before we commit to the findings of a research effort, we need to feel 100% sure…
Two paragraphs can be exceptionally thought provoking when they get right to the point. In a simple introduction to the New York Times Book Review some time ago, the editors highlighted two ideas about statistics and stories worth sharing.
Election season polling always highlights the danger of bad pollsters giving the market research and polling industry a bad name. While there are lots of reasons that polls might predict outcomes incorrectly (polling is far more difficult and risky than many people think) there is no excuse for deliberately bad pollsters making up data to…
Making sense of data and statistics is not just a matter of being clear and precise, nor is it just a matter of keeping things simple (though all of these are important). To make numbers really compelling, we need to relate them to people’s experiences. If we want our audience to grasp the importance of…
You might think that a research firm specializing in surveys would be glad to see a world in which customer feedback surveys are everywhere. Not so. I take part in a lot of webinars, and unfortunately I am asked to complete a survey (at least one) every time I attend. Some websites ask me to…
In an article published some years ago entitled Data-Driven Journalism, Walker Sands, a Chicago-based marketing and PR agency, outlined two ways to get media placement for your company or your client with research. Their premise was that journalists and readers are hungry for interesting stories, and in today’s data-driven world, some of the most interesting…
We are big fans data visualization (in addition to presenting data with numbers and tables). But even the basics of visualizing data can be challenging, so it is worth thinking about how and when to use some of the simplest tools, like pie charts and bar charts. Pie charts can be particularly challenging because they…
Market researchers complain a lot when they get data back from surveys and see that people have been “speeding” through their surveys or that people are not giving thoughtful responses. Putting aside the issue of fraud (which is a huge problem in our industry) the problem is rarely “bad respondents” – instead the problem is…
One of the cool things about social science and marketing research is that it brings together mathematics and human behavior. Mathematics is beautiful, elegant, and abstract. It is much like art. Human behavior is messy, contradictory, and frustrating, desperately in need of a way to make sense of it. Bringing the two together – turning…