I once heard from an overzealous boss with a Ph.D. in political science that measurement scales should always have an odd number of scale points – the reason being that measurement scales should always have a neutral middle. We sometimes hear this from clients reviewing survey drafts as well: “Shouldn’t every question have a neither,…
Nobody gets really good at market research by taking classes. It comes from learning on the job and in the field from other researchers. That is because researchers are always solving new problems and answering new questions that have never been asked before. That inspired us to make our summer newsletter The Big “How To”…
To get a more robust and representative sample, there are lots of things you can do that will encourage people to participate. You can send them reminders. You can call them. You can invest in snazzy designs to make your survey invitations ever more appealing. But here is one of the best investments you can…
The problem with most business approaches to “analytics” is that they rely on automated, unthinking algorithms. The algorithms scan boatloads of data and generate correlations that are surprising and, therefore, presumably deeply insightful. But in most cases the correlations are not insightful. They are random coincidences, which unfortunately does not stop humans from sharing with…
Do you ever feel a little glow of patriotic pride in your research work? At Versta Research we sometimes do. Here’s why: the United States of America gives us and you—all free, and all easily accessible—one of the most amazing, useful resources available to every person and every business and every researcher: Census Data. It…
If you want the most valid and reliable measures you can get, forget about NPS and other 11-point scales that so many companies use as their primary measure of customer satisfaction these days. It turns out that 2-point scales (yes vs. no, satisfied vs. dissatisfied, etc.) are far more reliable measures for gauging consumer attitudes.…
When college students get all worked up about inappropriate uses of email for campus electioneering, it is worth paying attention. Why? Because they are the next generation of consumers (and business decision makers) who will get our requests to participate in surveys. If we do it wrong, they will hit back, and they will be…
Here is the third invitation in our review of three survey invitations. (See also: #1 How Bad Are We? and #2 How Amazing Are We?) In my opinion this one is easily the best. It is truthful and sincere, and tells me immediately why helping this company (by completing their survey) is important to them…
Of the three invitations up for review in our mini-series on survey invitations (see also: #1 How Bad Are We? and #3 How’s Our Relationship?) this is the laughably obnoxious one: What do you think about Acme? Tell us about your experience with Acme products and solutions to help us understand what’s going well, and…
I received survey invitations from three different companies over the last three weeks. Each takes a starkly different approach to wooing participation. One of them I admire; the other two offend me. The invitations brought to mind two feature-length articles we wrote for our newsletter subscribers in 2017: Building a Better Customer Satisfaction Survey and…