We recently offered an article about needing to “punish test” surveys lest you end up with a mess of mistakes like text piping that fails, or survey layouts that do not to adapt to user devices. But how do you actually punish test a survey? The best way, we think, is to start with a…
Thank you for your interest in our July 16, 2020 presentation at the Quirk’s Event! Here is the deck we used for that presentation. Feel free to download and circulate. Soon, we will have a full video of the presentation available, as well. It will be part of the Summer 2020 Versta Research Newsletter. If…
Versta Research fields omnibus surveys, and we often recommend such surveys for our clients. But omnibus surveys do no not always save money or offer the insights that are needed, and so we often recommend inexpensive alternatives as well. In years past, data collection was a slow, complicated, and expensive task. If you had just…
Testing a survey before it launches takes about 4 to 6 hours of an experienced professional’s time, for a standard ten- to fifteen-minute survey. If you don’t invest that time up front, you are almost certain to discover mistakes while in the field (or worse: after), which can make for a nightmare of programming corrections…
Quite by accident, I just discovered the best new tool for reading and fixing research reports: the Read-Aloud function in Microsoft Office programs. It helps spot typos, missing or extra words, misspellings, grammatical mistakes and awkward phrases — everything I need to fix my writing before finalizing and sharing written text about research and surveys…
This summer you will not have to schlep to Ann Arbor for a month if you want to take advantage of top-notch summer training courses in survey research offered at the University of Michigan. Everything is being offered online this year! It is a perfect opportunity for corporate researchers and others who work on the…
A public relations client early in my career gave this assessment of my work: “Joe is strong at highlighting problems, but what I really care about is solutions.” That was many years ago, after I left university teaching and started doing client work full time. Her words have stayed with me and deeply shaped the…
This data we saw last week reflects the type of data that PR professionals absolutely dream about and hope for when they conduct surveys. It shows hugely dramatic differences among the 50 U.S. states. The media relations people were able to pitch local outlets in each state with a story about how their area and…
Contrary to some widely held beliefs that mobile devices are a barrier to survey participation, a majority of survey respondents nowadays fill them out on phones, rather than on desktops, laptops, or tablets. Research has amply documented that the quality and reliability of data collected via mobile devices is comparable to data collected on desktops.…
It is possible now to get thousands of responses to a survey overnight so that you can turn around research results as quickly as your managers and clients want. Would you trust the findings? I hope not. Suppose you want a general population survey that truly represents all U.S. adults. You will need to ensure…