Despite having been on the front lines of social research for so many years, interviewing respondents personally and eliciting data through surveys, I still feel somewhat surprised and disbelieving that people really want to participate in research. But they do. Sometimes eagerly. Almost always truthfully. Surely, my surprise stems from my own reluctance to fill…
For some reason I’m always a little surprised that people tell the truth on surveys. I like to think of my “healthy skepticism” as a professional asset, because it forces us to check and double check, corroborate and triangulate. Before we commit to the findings of a research effort, we need to feel 100% sure…
You might think that a research firm specializing in surveys would be glad to see a world in which customer feedback surveys are everywhere. Not so. I take part in a lot of webinars, and unfortunately I am asked to complete a survey (at least one) every time I attend. Some websites ask me to…
There are three important characteristics of people who “satisfice” on surveys: They are less conscientious They are less agreeable They have different cognitive skills The first two refer to dimensions of the Big Five personality traits. Conscientious people are efficient and organized vs. extravagant or careless. Agreeable people are friendly and compassionate vs. critical and…
It might seem obvious that inattentive survey respondents should deleted from your data. Think again. Here’s why a “light touch” during data quality review is best.
Cell phone dialing is now essential for phone surveys, just as mobile-optimized surveys are essential for online surveys. A lot of market research continues to ignore this.
One refrain you will see on these pages throughout 2021 is that the time of cheap and easy online surveys is probably coming to a bitter, crashing end. Response rates are plummeting, even lower than we thought possible. Cheap online research panels (which are used for the vast majority of market research) are rife with…
Versta Research is presenting this week at the 76th annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). The conference is being held virtually from May 11 to 14, 2021. The presentation is called Finding Fraud in Public Polls: Employing Semantic Network-Based Methods for Identifying Fraud in Online Sampling. It is a reflection…
One of the biggest challenges Versta Research faced during the first year of COVID-19 was a huge and puzzling spike in the amount of fraud on research panels. We saw many organizations falling victim to this fraud. There were obviously false studies with absurdly sensational headlines being published by the media and in scientific journals.…
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…