Whether you’re a seasoned research professional, a newbie, or whether you dabble in research for other job responsibilities (like marketing or strategy) you will probably find something you don’t yet know in our winter newsletter with a feature article on 25 Things You Might Not Know About Research. It covers topics from stats, to charts,…
In our company we nearly always try to keep data collection “anonymous.” This means that for most of our surveys we intentionally do not know the identity of who participates (though our sample providers do). We rarely ask for any type of identifying information, not even a first name. If for some reason we have…
It really bugged me that I got this “survey” invitation last week, in part because it conforms so well to many of the best practices we advise for designing effective survey invitations. Take a look: It offers a generous incentive. It has a nice graphic saying how long the survey takes. It has a prominent…
A survey platform we have been using launched a new service promising an “expert review” of our surveys before we send them out for data collection. Unfortunately, it is a gimmick. It turns out that there are no experts reviewing our surveys. An artificial intelligence robot reviews them. It was interesting to see which best…
An unfortunate consequence of NPS (Net Promoter Score) mania is that now zillions of surveys stalk us everywhere. Therefore, the likelihood of any particular survey being completed is extremely low. That might be okay if you are a large company with hundreds of thousands of customers to burn through with e-mail blasts. But if you…
Let’s suppose that customers want to be surveyed. What is the best way to do it? Should we call them, send email, use text messaging, push surveys through mobile apps, or send old-fashioned paper surveys through the mail? This is a question we rarely ask in market research, because for most survey research we desperately…
What if a survey asks you a question that implies a yes-no answer (“Have you ever …”) but then offers you answer options that are different from what it implied (“often, sometimes, rarely, never”)? New research tells us that it depends on how the survey is administered. If the survey is online or on paper,…
Here is the e-mail subject line to a request I just received from a research company asking me to take a survey: Your Help Is Key to Our Success. I find it hilarious that somebody thinks this is an enticing subject line, as if I care deeply about their success. They really want me to…
Any good researcher should agonize over mode effects in surveys. Mode effects are differences in statistical estimates caused by the “mode” through which respondents take a survey. If there are mode effects, then how the survey is conducted (by telephone, online, through a smartphone app, in person, or by mail) will affect the results, requiring…
This is the same survey I told you about a few weeks ago. It came back to me again, since I am part of the ABS-recruited probability-based panel that is fielding the survey. It is still one of the worst surveys I have ever seen. This time I took some screen shots: …