Versta Research is a marketing research and public opinion polling firm that helps you answer critical questions with customized research and analytical expertise.
Explore industry trends, research methods, and tips for your own research projects in the Versta Research Blog. All opinions are our own, and some may change over time.
First time reader? Check out the Best of the Blog for the most popular posts from almost 10 years of blogging. We’re glad you’re here.
Difficult or lengthy surveys require hefty incentives, which unfortunately makes it tempting for some respondents to lie. We are facing this predicament in a survey right now. The survey requires two people from the same household who share household finances to complete parallel surveys. We are recruiting from an online research panel. Person 1 gets…
For every research rule or best practice I proclaim, I find myself doing the opposite eventually. Such is the case with pie charts. I try to avoid them, taking to heart Edward Tufte’s claim that they are dumb and should never be used. Studies show that pie charts do a poor job helping readers grasp…
In our experience, the people who write the best questionnaires are researchers who spend their time immersed in complex survey methods and quantitative analysis but who focused on qualitative research earlier in their careers. Why? Because they are deeply sensitive to the dual objectives of survey design, namely: (1) Elicit data in specific ways and…
In the months leading up to this year’s Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, Wells Fargo worked with Versta Research on a national survey of LGBT Americans. The goal was to understand how changes in marriage laws were affecting decisions about money and marriage. What did we learn about LGBT Americans? Here are two nuggets…
Having jumped back into the 1,016-page Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence from the Federal Judicial Center and the National Research Council (see last week’s article on Defending Your Statistics in Court), I keep finding fascinating nuggets of information worth sharing with our marketing and research colleagues of all stripes. Consider this snippet from the section…
There is nothing worse than presenting research findings to an audience predisposed to hate it. Maybe you’ve had that experience of being in a boardroom of hostile managers? They don’t like what you’re about to say, so they pick at every methodological decision, shifting focus away from the story that the data have to tell.…
Segmenting customers into subsets that have unique needs, interests, and priorities makes a lot of sense. The more obvious the segments are, the more it makes sense, so a priori segments are best. Big companies in one segment, small companies in another. Retirees in one segment, college students in another. You don’t need fancy K-means…
If you found that 10% of your online survey respondents were ignoring your questions, generating random data, and there was an easy way to identify who those respondents were, what would you do? I hope you would delete them, go back to the field, and replace them. But for some reason there are those among…
Despite the welcome trend towards online polling, telephone surveys are still surprisingly common, and telephone outreach makes sense for certain types of research. But if you ever use or commission phone surveys, take note: do not use automated dialing to make calls. Instead, have interviewers manually dial the numbers so you don’t get caught in…
OK, using the word stalker instead of remarketing lists is harsh, but it perfectly conveys the idea behind Google Consumer Surveys’ (GCS) latest innovation for market research. You can use cookie lists from web pages to target people based on specific content they are viewing. Want to survey people who were on your website last…