We feel strongly that people who give us information through surveys, in-depth interviews, or focus group deserve a promise that this will never happen to them: One of the tenets of rigorous market research is that respondent confidentiality is key. Why? Primarily because it benefits you as a client. To make smart decisions, you need…
This past Monday I moderated a panel of thought leaders in market research to ponder the question: “How Will Social Media Change Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research?” The event was sponsored by the American Marketing Association, and included participants from GfK, Maritz, MARC, SAS, Market Tools, and Versta Research. One of the fascinating insights to…
One critical trend that is transforming the research industry is the rapid adoption of mobile technologies, especially smartphones. It transforms research in multiple ways. It means that people disconnect their landlines, so we have to adjust our methods for phone polling. But more importantly, it means people are accessible in multiple ways (text, phone, email)…
The idea that online panel surveys can replace telephone surveys ruffles feathers among my colleagues at the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). So what would they think of using Twitter posts as a substitute for phone surveys? The idea seems crazy, but as reported in Science, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found…
In the old days (decades ago), phone surveys had limited utility because many people had no phone service in their homes. When that changed, phone surveys became ubiquitous because they allowed researchers better control over the process. Data quality improved. Now increasing numbers of people have moved to cell phones only, which has been a…
We saw an ad today for a downloadable survey app similar to Survey Monkey or Zoomerang that was pitched as a tool for actionable insights. Wow! Download, install, run . . . click again, and there they are, sitting on your desktop or smart phone: actionable insights.
Another article was just published in the Spring 2010 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly exploring data quality differences between online surveys and phone surveys. The findings were based on a lab experiment in which subjects completed survey questions either on a computer or over an intercom system with an interviewer. Doing the study in a…
Asking people to fill out long, tiresome, and boring surveys is a scourge of the research, polling, and survey industry. (Another is asking them to fill out a survey every time they interact with you — see There Are Too Many Surveys.) Asking people to fill out long surveys teaches them to avoid surveys in…
If something works and it keeps on working but you don’t know exactly why it works, what would you do? Our view is that you should keep doing it. Not everyone agrees with us. The American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) convened a task force to study online survey panels, and released their report…
Ten years ago, surveys through online panels were rare. Mostly we conducted telephone surveys. Today it is the other way around. With online survey panels being a $2 billion industry in the U.S., there is now a wealth of comparative data to measure and assess the implications of using online surveys as a substitute for…