Versta Research Blog

Versta Research Blog

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Versta Research is a marketing research and public opinion polling firm that helps you answer critical questions with customized research and analytical expertise.

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Versta Research Blog

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.

How to Keep Innovating Your Research Methods

How to Keep Innovating Your Research Methods

If you ever have trouble separating all the hype of new methods and technology from the reality of whether those methods work, turn to the sober and decidedly non-hyped world of academic research.  Some of the smartest people in the world build their careers by pursuing scientific research about research methods.  They publish their results…

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Squeezing More from Your Open-Ends

Squeezing More from Your Open-Ends

A perennial problem with open-ended survey questions is that respondents are lazy.  It takes time and effort to think of good answers.  And if the survey is self-administered online or on paper, it takes time and effort to write them out. But there are several things a savvy researcher can do.  One of them is…

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Thinking Neuroscience? Just Use Twitter.

Thinking Neuroscience? Just Use Twitter.

I resist the idea of using Twitter for research because I do not know anyone beyond journalists, PR people, and marketing folks who actually use Twitter. Well, that’s a terrible reason to dismiss a potentially rich source of data, especially because one premise of survey research is that small parts can represent the whole.  My…

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Getting Your Ad to Light Up My Brain

Getting Your Ad to Light Up My Brain

Having just returned from giving a presentation at the Advertising Research Foundation’s annual conference, Re:Think 2015, I learned that ARF’s “Ground Truth #2” is that brands are built in the brain.  As such, the ARF has invested a good deal of time and money over the last decade exploring ways that neuroscience can be applied…

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The Best Place to Learn All Things Data

The Best Place to Learn All Things Data

Every year I peruse the listings of summer college training courses on research methods. Part of it is nostalgia—I loved school. But I’m also looking for courses that will keep me and our Versta employees at the forefront of new knowledge and research techniques. (I didn’t learn R in graduate school, so yes, I took…

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UGH to Sugging and Frugging

UGH to Sugging and Frugging

One of the cardinal sins of market research is to misrepresent the purpose of research and how it will be used.  The colorful terms used for two of the most common forms for misrepresentation are SUGGING and FRUGGING. The first of these stands for Selling Under the Guise of research.  The nefarious “research” firm calls…

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How Would Hemingway Present Your Research?

How Would Hemingway Present Your Research?

I’m working on a presentation with a research colleague at Wells Fargo for the upcoming ARF (Advertising Research Foundation) Re:Think 2015 conference.  The challenge?  Getting it streamlined and condensed so that we can deliver the whole thing within a strict timeframe.  All the research, all the insights, all the business outcomes from a huge national…

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Stat Testing: A (Too) Easy Crutch

Stat Testing: A (Too) Easy Crutch

Those of us who do a lot of survey research spend tons of time poring over statistics and reading data tables.  And no matter what all the latest clever tools promise, there is no shortcut to reading page after page after page of data or tables or charts, and discerning the patterns or lack thereof.…

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High Response Rates Hurt Data Quality

High Response Rates Hurt Data Quality

An irony of survey researchers’ obsession with high response rates is that higher response rates often hurt data quality.  How can that be?  It happens because aggressive recruiting boosts the participation of people who provide less reliable information.  Two academic articles published in a special issue of Public Opinion Quarterly on “total survey error” nicely…

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