A feature story on the Versta Research website is about mapping shopper segments onto buyer segments. That story may have had you asking how we measured and defined those segments in the first place. The answer: by devising careful and nuanced survey questions to capture what our qualitative research partners learned about how consumers assess,…
Surveys don’t get much simpler than this. It is from the New York Times, which I typically admire for its rigorous reporting, thoughtful analysis, and forward-thinking experimentation with data visualization. But even with such simplicity, this survey (published on April 22, 2018) manages to be terrible in at least three big ways: It asks a…
How many people do you think are college-educated in the United States? If you’re like most clients we work for (whose family members, friends and co-workers nearly all have college degrees) you will substantially over-estimate that number. The answer is a mere 29%. If you include associate’s degrees, then it goes up to 37%. These…
If you are a smart person and you only occasionally try your hand at writing a survey, here is something you may find yourself doing: adding an open box at the end of every question so that respondents can “write in” their own answer if the pre-listed answers do not fit them. Our clients do…
If you deploy your own surveys trying to solicit feedback from your customers, you know how hard it is to get them to respond. There are many good reasons why customers ignore surveys nowadays. Here is one potential culprit: You may be asking them for information you already know. If you are, they know that…
If you design surveys that adapt well to mobile devices, you can feel proud. Current estimates are that only about half of all market research surveys are mobile-friendly. According to Research Now, an online panel that fields thousands of surveys from research vendors like Versta, just 15% are fully optimized for mobile use. But now…
Here’s an unfortunate reality in the world of survey research: Survey questions can sometimes be copyrighted. When certain questions (no matter how obvious and common) are asked together as a set, and then scaled into a single measure (no matter how obvious and simple), and then validated in a study as being a solid tool…
If you grew up in the United States, you probably think big numbers are better when it comes to rating things. Higher scores on school exams are better. Higher scores in games and sports are usually better. Higher credit scores are better. Five-star restaurants are definitely better than one-star restaurants. In Germany it is often…
We use Google Surveys for quick, cheap incidence tests, or to test question wording or answer scales. Every time I use it, however, I am startled by how foolish Google Surveys can be. Here is an example we noticed from our most recent use of the tool. Start constructing your Google Survey. Add a “single…
Bad surveys bug me. Bad surveys touted in The New York Times bug me even more, as I expect only the best from them. Bad surveys on the front page of The New York Times with ridiculous and sensationalist findings bug me so much that they inspire blog posts. A front page article on July…