The problem (so we’ve been told) with check-all-that-apply survey questions is that respondents do not process the full list of response options carefully and thoughtfully. Instead, they glance through, knowing they’re supposed to find at least a few that are relevant to them. They check the ones that jump out (often at the top of…
When the U.S. Census Bureau started redesigning its race and ethnicity question for the 2020 decennial census, we started revising our own short version for surveys, too. Now we have enough data from one full years-worth of surveying on multiple projects, and we can tell you this: it works really well. We used to have…
If you have been tasked with the job of measuring “brand authenticity,” you probably noticed what a messy conceptual world you are now in. The idea of brand authenticity makes sense, but all the vague and competing definitions proffered by consultants surely makes your job harder. In comes market research to the rescue! A professor…
Last week we showed you a survey that might convince you to think twice about hiring a super high-end consulting firm for your survey research and insights. Fancy business consultants may know a lot about business, but they know little about gathering good data to answer their business questions. So this week, instead of focusing…
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…
One luxury of doing primary research is that you can get data perfectly tailored to the problem you need to solve. Primary research allows you to design how data will be elicited, and how, exactly, attitudes and behaviors are measured. Hence, you get the insight you need. If you don’t have perfectly tailored data, you…
This summer you will not have to schlep to Ann Arbor for a month if you want to take advantage of top-notch summer training courses in survey research offered at the University of Michigan. Everything is being offered online this year! It is a perfect opportunity for corporate researchers and others who work on the…
If demographic benchmarks and trends are essential to your business and the research you conduct (things like age, gender, race, ethnicity, and region) then our just-published 2020 Spring Newsletter has information you absolutely need to know. The U.S. Census Bureau continues to change how it collects and classifies demographic data. Right now the Bureau is…
If you read our article a few weeks ago about COVID-19, there were probably several statistics we cited that you (or maybe a colleague) misinterpreted. 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 had no…
I write a lot about how robots are messing up market research. But yesterday, I had the happy experience of a robot helping us in a surprising a way. It flagged an error in a list of competitive brands for an ATU study (Attitudes, Trial, and Usage)—an error that would invalidated our results if we…