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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…
Five years ago there were too many surveys, and today there are WAY too many surveys. They’ve taken over management functions and customer service departments. Have a complaint? Forget calling customer service (and good luck finding them). The best way get your complaint addressed is to give a low survey score, and, pronto, somebody contacts…
Earlier this year we trumpeted the idea of corporate research groups helping internal business partners do their own research. Sometimes is makes tons of sense, and sometimes not. So when it comes time for something more complicated, how do you educate a client about what matters and what doesn’t in terms of quality and rigor?…