A truly effective research report is both parsimonious and richly nuanced. In other words, (1) it is short and to the point, and (2) it captures the complexity of reality. But how do you do both? The importance of the first was highlighted some time ago in a NYT “Corner Office” interview with Guy Kawasaki,…
Getting your research findings heard, understood, and used should always be your goal. That means more than putting findings into a report deck, presenting results to the marketing team, writing up press releases, or getting media placement for a PR story. It means having your audience engage with it by thinking, sharing, and taking action.…
Data visualization will likely be one the biggest areas of innovation and development over the next several years. This is a good. A chart that clearly and succinctly displays detailed data in a way that captures the viewer’s attention and helps interpret the data can be incredibly powerful. Edward Tufte, a pioneer in this area,…
Two paragraphs can be exceptionally thought provoking when they get right to the point. In a simple introduction to the New York Times Book Review some time ago, the editors highlighted two ideas about statistics and stories worth sharing.
Making sense of data and statistics is not just a matter of being clear and precise, nor is it just a matter of keeping things simple (though all of these are important). To make numbers really compelling, we need to relate them to people’s experiences. If we want our audience to grasp the importance of…
We are big fans data visualization (in addition to presenting data with numbers and tables). But even the basics of visualizing data can be challenging, so it is worth thinking about how and when to use some of the simplest tools, like pie charts and bar charts. Pie charts can be particularly challenging because they…
On Monday I received media training from one of the research industry’s top professional organizations: The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). They hired Brenda Foster, a career journalist and now a communications and PR consultant, to teach research nerds about how to succeed with media interviews when talking about research findings. First she…
Like most researchers who take data visualization seriously, I am not a fan of pie charts. But not too long ago I came across a pair of pie charts that display data in a striking and visually compelling way. Indeed, they tell a story with data better than other alternative types of charts. The story…
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…
If you read our article a few years back ago about COVID-19, you may have noticed some statistics we cited that seemed odd and open to misinterpretation. That’s because instead of reporting the percentage of respondents who did or said something, we reported the mean of all survey respondents’ answers to a numeric scale. We…