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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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Early this month, David Blackwell, a prominent statistician and mathematician died at the age of 91. For many he is well known because he was the first African American to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences. For others, he is well known because he wrote an important and early book about Bayesian statistics,…
Clients tell us that one of the biggest challenges they face is writing great research reports. There is the overwhelming difficulty of turning data into stories — making sense of volumes of data without losing the big picture or the details. And there is the difficulty of truly communicating research so that it is heard,…
Telling a story with data is one part finding the right words, and one part finding a compelling visual way to present numbers. Good visualization of data conveys the “big picture” at a glance. At the same time, it includes details so that the audience understands and sees both the whole and the parts. Effective…
One critical trend that is transforming the research industry is the rapid adoption of mobile technologies, especially smartphones. It transforms research in multiple ways. It means that people disconnect their landlines, so we have to adjust our methods for phone polling. But more importantly, it means people are accessible in multiple ways (text, phone, email)…
The summer 2010 newsletter from Versta Research focuses on how to bridge the gap between quantitative research and qualitative research, whether it be market research or academic research. Both methods give rich insights, and both offer compelling ways to summarize and communicate data. But rarely does each method draw upon the strengths of the other.…
We are currently engaged in a research project for a client in South Korea, so issues of cross-cultural communication are top-of-mind for us right now. Whether we rely on translations, or whether we speak the same language as our clients and respondents, it is important for researchers to understand differences in how people think and…
The idea that online panel surveys can replace telephone surveys ruffles feathers among my colleagues at the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). So what would they think of using Twitter posts as a substitute for phone surveys? The idea seems crazy, but as reported in Science, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found…
In the old days (decades ago), phone surveys had limited utility because many people had no phone service in their homes. When that changed, phone surveys became ubiquitous because they allowed researchers better control over the process. Data quality improved. Now increasing numbers of people have moved to cell phones only, which has been a…
We saw an ad today for a downloadable survey app similar to Survey Monkey or Zoomerang that was pitched as a tool for actionable insights. Wow! Download, install, run . . . click again, and there they are, sitting on your desktop or smart phone: actionable insights.
Today, an industry colleague (another owner of a market research firm) said to me, “We all lust after those big tracking studies.” For most market research firms, tracking studies are attractive because they involve big samples, multiple ongoing deliverables, and multi-year commitments, all of which means predictable, ongoing (and usually substantial) revenue. At Versta Research,…