I used to think that when potential research respondents said no they’re not interested in participating in our survey, they really meant it, end of story. Then I started working more on the field side where all kinds of different data collection was happening all the time. Seeing recruitment and data collection up close amazed…
A feature story on the Versta Research website is about mapping shopper segments onto buyer segments. That story may have had you asking how we measured and defined those segments in the first place. The answer: by devising careful and nuanced survey questions to capture what our qualitative research partners learned about how consumers assess,…
Surveys don’t get much simpler than this. It is from the New York Times, which I typically admire for its rigorous reporting, thoughtful analysis, and forward-thinking experimentation with data visualization. But even with such simplicity, this survey (published on April 22, 2018) manages to be terrible in at least three big ways: It asks a…
How many people do you think are college-educated in the United States? If you’re like most clients we work for (whose family members, friends and co-workers nearly all have college degrees) you will substantially over-estimate that number. The answer is a mere 29%. If you include associate’s degrees, then it goes up to 37%. These…
You might think that writing a feature article about liars, cheaters, and trolls in online surveys means we have a pretty damning view of online polls as a method of research. Not so. We are all in when it comes to online polling, and in fact it comprises the majority of the survey research we…
Here’s some advice on conducting quantitative research you probably never heard in a college class, and will likely never hear from purveyors of online survey platforms: Never analyze and report on your data until you take a close look at who (or what) fraudsters may be contaminating your data. Versta Research has just published its…
This week one of our sample suppliers said “no” when we asked if we could re-contact respondents for a purpose other than our original request. Good thing I asked, and you know what? I’m glad they said no. I want suppliers to think carefully about seemingly simple requests, and to point out ways in which…
Sure we laugh at those ridiculously biased fundraising “surveys” from politicians. But for some reason, the poorly (but more cleverly) designed surveys put out by corporate PR departments often get a pass. Even worse, they sometimes get tons of visibility in both mainstream press and social media. I saw one such survey a few weeks…
This survey was done by a fancy business professor, in an endowed chair, at a top-ten university, along with a managing director at one of the world’s largest consulting firms. Then it was printed in one of our industry’s top publishing outlets. It takes less that a minute to scan this data and to realize…
A good friend and client likes to joke during every project: “Remember Joe, correlation does not imply causation.” Well, I thought she was joking. Surely everybody with a job in marketing research knows this? Apparently not. Even professors at fancy business schools seem to forget it, as evidenced by this snippet of an article a…