As much as we love numbers, we find ourselves often advising clients against using numeric scales in their surveys. A numeric scale is any response format that asks people to give a number within a certain range to indicate the strength of their feeling or opinion. The insanely popular survey question used to calculate Net…
Among the many sources of potential error that can affect surveys are respondents themselves. They sometimes misinterpret questions, respond in socially acceptable ways, or give “easy” answers in hopes that a more interesting question is just around the corner. This is not to say they are bad or fraudulent respondents. Research shows that the vast…
One resource that we give far too little thought in market research are the people who offer their time and thoughts about the stuff we are researching. They are truly the lifeblood of market research. An article in the spring 2011 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly looks at trends over the last thirty years in…
One might think that with evolving technologies, the old-fashioned ways of doing research, like using paper and pencil, might disappear. But it turns out that paper surveys are not dead, and here is a nice example that dramatically illustrates their value. As newly-appointed director of market research for the American Marketing Association in Chicago, I…
The technology to field surveys via mobile devices has been around for a while, but has not yet gained much traction (and for good reasons). But with smartphones now proliferating at a remarkable pace, we may be in for a change. Deloitte released their 2011 IT and technology predictions last week, arguing that smartphones are…
The latest data from the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey show that one quarter (25%) of U.S. adults do not have land-line telephones in their homes. So if you conduct a traditional random-digit-dial (RDD) phone survey, you will automatically be excluding one quarter of the population. Does it matter, given that surveys rarely interview everyone…
Good data from a survey requires, among other things, thoughtful feedback from respondents. Low-quality data most often comes not from fraudulent or lazy respondents, but from well-meaning survey takers who are bored or irritated with surveys that are not user-friendly. In this article we focus not on the unengaged respondents who may be offering up…
Surveys matter only if people are willing to fill them out – and getting people to fill them out is not an easy task. There are many interesting distractions in the world! And there many silly surveys and junk surveys competing for people’s attention. When the time comes that you need important feedback via a…
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)…
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.