If you are not testing all of your surveys for how they function on mobile, you absolutely should be. Almost half of respondents in our most recent U.S. census-rep survey completed the survey on mobile devices. This included 30% who completed it on phones, and 17% who completed it on tablets. Here is a quick…
Sometimes technology moves so fast it solves a problem before we solve it in other ways. Such is the case with grid-type questions and mobile surveys. People are doing surveys on mobile devices all the time now, so researchers are finally re-thinking how to design surveys. Getting rid of grids has been one mantra of…
Last month we were honored to be on the main stage at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:Think 2015 Conference, sharing with the nation’s top research and advertising executives insights from our work with Wells Fargo. I use the word honored for two reasons. First, we were selected from over 200 entries for one of the…
If you ever have trouble separating all the hype of new methods and technology from the reality of whether those methods work, turn to the sober and decidedly non-hyped world of academic research. Some of the smartest people in the world build their careers by pursuing scientific research about research methods. They publish their results…
A perennial problem with open-ended survey questions is that respondents are lazy. It takes time and effort to think of good answers. And if the survey is self-administered online or on paper, it takes time and effort to write them out. But there are several things a savvy researcher can do. One of them is…
I resist the idea of using Twitter for research because I do not know anyone beyond journalists, PR people, and marketing folks who actually use Twitter. Well, that’s a terrible reason to dismiss a potentially rich source of data, especially because one premise of survey research is that small parts can represent the whole. My…
Having just returned from giving a presentation at the Advertising Research Foundation’s annual conference, Re:Think 2015, I learned that ARF’s “Ground Truth #2” is that brands are built in the brain. As such, the ARF has invested a good deal of time and money over the last decade exploring ways that neuroscience can be applied…
Every year I peruse the listings of summer college training courses on research methods. Part of it is nostalgia—I loved school. But I’m also looking for courses that will keep me and our Versta employees at the forefront of new knowledge and research techniques. (I didn’t learn R in graduate school, so yes, I took…
One of the cardinal sins of market research is to misrepresent the purpose of research and how it will be used. The colorful terms used for two of the most common forms for misrepresentation are SUGGING and FRUGGING. The first of these stands for Selling Under the Guise of research. The nefarious “research” firm calls…
I’m working on a presentation with a research colleague at Wells Fargo for the upcoming ARF (Advertising Research Foundation) Re:Think 2015 conference. The challenge? Getting it streamlined and condensed so that we can deliver the whole thing within a strict timeframe. All the research, all the insights, all the business outcomes from a huge national…