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.

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Merging Zip Codes with Census Data

Merging Zip Codes with Census Data

One of the most common and useful units of geographic analysis for our business clients and other types of organizations is zip code. That’s because we typically have residential or business addresses for their customers and prospects, and also because zip codes demarcate relatively small areas, are easy to map, and are familiar to most…

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Try to Untangle This Knot of Numbers

Try to Untangle This Knot of Numbers

Two of my usually-favorite sources for information and insight (AAPOR and the New York Times) came together this week with an embarrassing, face-scrunching example of convoluted statistical reporting: But Internet use correlates inversely with age and voting habits, making [online polling] a more severe problem in predicting elections. While all but 3 percent of those…

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When Net Promoter Scores Don’t Make Sense

When Net Promoter Scores Don’t Make Sense

There are plenty of good reasons to use Net Promoter Scores (NPS). They are based on sound measurement, are simple to use, are conceptually compelling, and are widely known by business executives outside of market research. But you know something is amiss when your bank starts asking how likely you are to recommend the online…

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Talking about Infographics at LIMRA

Talking about Infographics at LIMRA

  Tomorrow we’re giving a talk at LIMRA’s annual Marketing and Research Conference in Baltimore. The topic? Creating spectacular infographics for market research. It builds upon our Newsletter article from last July, and upon our subsequent top-five article in Quirk’s. And thanks to our own Peter Kowalski, who has extraordinary talent designing infographics for research,…

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Define Millennials Using These Years

Define Millennials Using These Years

I’ve never been a huge fan of talking about generations like Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, or Millennials.  Age differences make sense to me.  But the dividing lines between “generations” commonly used in the media and in our industry seem so arbitrary.  In fact, those dividing lines put me in the same generation as my aunts…

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Beautiful (and Mostly Accurate) Venn Diagrams

Venn diagrams are useful conceptual tools, which is why business people love them, and why programs like Word and PowerPoint incorporate them into their suite of “smart art” tools.  But as useful as they are conceptually, Venn diagrams are also maddeningly tricky and problematic for data visualization. One reason is that accurate Venn diagrams are…

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Quick-Testing Surveys for Mobile

Quick-Testing Surveys for Mobile

If you are not testing all of your surveys for how they function on mobile, you absolutely should be.  Almost half of respondents in our most recent U.S. census-rep survey completed the survey on mobile devices.  This included 30% who completed it on phones, and 17% who completed it on tablets. Here is a quick…

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