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Category Archives: Best of Blog

The Coolest Chart You Probably Never Use

The Coolest Chart You Probably Never Use

Best of Blog, Charts and Data Visualization, Methods & Tools, Presenting ResearchBy Joe HopperJuly 3, 2024

Here’s a chart that will dazzle the research and design teams you are working for. It’s called a Sankey chart. In the context of market research, it is used to show the “flow” of respondents from one cut of data into another. For example, suppose you have data on how respondents started shopping online for…

Don’t Be Fooled by the Mean (or How to Avoid Absurd Statistical Claims in Your PR and Market Research Surveys)

Don’t Be Fooled by the Mean (or How to Avoid Absurd Statistical Claims in Your PR and Market Research Surveys)

Best of Blog, Turning Data into StoriesBy Joe HopperMay 3, 2023

An article in The New Yorker claimed that a hundred years ago most Americans died in their mid-fifties. Alas, they were fooled by a statistic and the claim is not true.

This is What a McKinsey Survey Looks Like

This is What a McKinsey Survey Looks Like

Best of Blog, Survey Design, Survey Tips, Topics in MarketingBy Joe HopperJune 9, 2021

Ever wonder what you get if you hire a fancy schmancy consulting firm for your survey research and marketing insights, instead of Versta Research? Every once in a while we have a potential client who insists: “Give us IBM! Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.” I got a view into what those surveys look…

Why Your CEO Loves NPS: It Is Never Audited, and It Never Declines

Why Your CEO Loves NPS: It Is Never Audited, and It Never Declines

Best of Blog, Future Trends, Presenting Research, Topics in MarketingBy Joe HopperApril 22, 2020

Market research has made it all the way to the top! It has a seat at the c-suite table just as marketing and research champions have hoped for all these years. According to a recent analysis by The Wall Street Journal, a large number of CEOs now track their company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) obsessively,…

Research Lessons from a Puppy: Why You Need Balanced Scales

Research Lessons from a Puppy: Why You Need Balanced Scales

Best of Blog, Survey Design, Survey TipsBy Joe HopperJuly 31, 2019

Believe it or not, some people do not find puppies irresistibly adorable, as our newest honorary member of the Versta Research team (pictured here) can tell you. Elio arrived a couple of weeks ago. He is 13 weeks old and truly over-the-top adorable. He mostly sleeps in a crate next to me as I work…

How Many Questions in a 10-Minute Survey?

How Many Questions in a 10-Minute Survey?

Best of Blog, Data Collection, Methods & Tools, Survey DesignBy Joe HopperFebruary 8, 2017

It all depends on what counts as a “question,” and also on how complex those questions are. A grid question with multiple rows takes a longer to answer than a simple yes-or-no question. A question that allows you to select multiple items from a laundry list of options takes longer than a standard 4-point scale.…

The “Disney Experience” of Market Research

The “Disney Experience” of Market Research

Best of Blog, Data CollectionBy Joe HopperJune 15, 2016

One thing that impressed me about my recent trip to Disney World (for Versta Research’s presentation on infographics at LIMRA’s annual market research conference) was this: It felt nice not to be badgered at every “touch point” for survey feedback about how they were doing. Indeed, Disney World is known for taking customer experience to…

A Tale of Data That Became Too Big

A Tale of Data That Got Too Big

Best of Blog, Data Analysis & Analytics, Future Trends, Turning Data into StoriesBy Joe HopperOctober 28, 2015

Here is a brilliant thought experiment about big data, published as a one-paragraph short story in 1946 by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges: “. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the…

A Quick Puzzle for Market Research Brains

A Quick Puzzle for Market Research Brains

Best of Blog, Data Analysis & AnalyticsBy Joe HopperOctober 21, 2015

We have just published the Versta Research Fall 2015 Newsletter, offering an interactive puzzle to test your analytical skills as a research brain. It is based on a fascinating study published half a century ago in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. When I first encountered the puzzle it stuck in my mind for quite…

Beautiful (and Mostly Accurate) Venn Diagrams

Best of Blog, Charts and Data VisualizationBy Joe HopperMay 13, 2015

Venn diagrams are useful conceptual tools, which is why business people love them, and why programs like Word and PowerPoint incorporate them into their suite of “smart art” tools.  But as useful as they are conceptually, Venn diagrams are also maddeningly tricky and problematic for data visualization. One reason is that accurate Venn diagrams are…

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