Data Visualization Is Not the Silver Bullet You Hoped For
It is magical thinking to believe that charts and graphs and fancy new tools for data visualization will solve the challenge of finding insights in data.
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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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A Better Way to Ask Race and Ethnicity (and Proof That It Works)
Versta Research has a new way of asking about race and ethnicity on surveys, and it is reducing respondent confusion and complaints by 80%.
How to Measure Brand Authenticity
This article outlines the six measurable dimensions of brand authenticity — established in academic research — that you should include in any survey of brand authenticity.
What Do Gen Z Marketing Students Think of Research?
Imagine a class of undergraduate students in business marketing taking their first—maybe their only—marketing research class. What is the toughest part of research for them? After one lecture and an assignment, we asked them, and nobody said math or statistics. We’ve just published the Versta Research Summer Newsletter and our feature article, What Do Gen…
How to Test Knowledge and Misperceptions on a Survey
It’s not easy to use a survey to measure public knowledge or misperceptions. Why? Because surveys are not quizzes. Respondents expect you to ask questions they can answer truthfully and correctly based on their opinions and experience. As good researchers, we mostly try to reassure respondents: “There are no right or wrong answers! Please give…
Are They Cheating or Helping? New Research on Survey “Cheating” Raises Thorny Issue
An endearing trait of survey respondents is that most are sincerely interested in helping you. They want to offer authentic opinions. They want to provide you with good data. I was reminded of this when reading findings from a study about survey “cheating” in a recent issue of Public Opinion Quarterly. The researchers (at the…
Five Mid-Year Resolutions to Inspire Better Research in 2021
With all the strange business disruptions of the last 16 months, and the ways in which the coronavirus shifted the foundations of market research, July 1 feels a lot more like the beginning of a new year than January 1 did. Life is back to normal, we hope! This “new year” inspires us to take…
How to Fix a McKinsey Survey: 10 Best Practices They Should Have Followed
Last week we showed you a survey that might convince you to think twice about hiring a super high-end consulting firm for your survey research and insights. Fancy business consultants may know a lot about business, but they know little about gathering good data to answer their business questions. So this week, instead of focusing…
This is What a McKinsey Survey Looks Like
Ever wonder what you get if you hire a fancy schmancy consulting firm for your survey research and marketing insights, instead of Versta Research? Every once in a while we have a potential client who insists: “Give us IBM! Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.” I got a view into what those surveys look…
Surprising Ways to Reduce Survey Costs: Give Respondents Money Before They Take Your Survey
One refrain you will see on these pages throughout 2021 is that the time of cheap and easy online surveys is probably coming to a bitter, crashing end. Response rates are plummeting, even lower than we thought possible. Cheap online research panels (which are used for the vast majority of market research) are rife with…