Most companies test new product or service ideas with concept tests to evaluate market interest and to refine their ideas. Most of these (like most surveys, nowadays) are conducted online, which offers speed and cost efficiency. But there is a downside. While people are quite adept at reviewing ideas and answering questions in online formats,…
Here we are on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, which makes it a perfect time to answer the question: “What in the world do we mean by accessible surveys?” Our last newsletter (How to Make a Survey ADA Accessible) outlined the important steps needed to begin developing such surveys. But it’s worth stepping back from the…
Nine out of ten Americans (89%) regularly use the Internet. So the old argument that online surveys will miss big chunks of the U.S. population is no longer valid. But an important question remains: Are the remaining one in ten (11%) who are beyond reach with online surveys substantially different from the others? And if…
If you are a consumer-facing company deploying online surveys of your customers, accessible surveys will likely be on your agenda in the next couple of years. Accessible surveys incorporate unique design features so that people with disabilities who use assistive technologies can participate as fully as others. With the need for survey accessibility growing and…
For all the high level intellectual work you do in research (statistical work, design work, analysis, or writing) there is just as much brute force effort you need to put into fieldwork. That means finding the people to interview, convincing them to participate, asking them questions, and recording their answers. Even if you outsource, keeping…
Some respondents answer survey questions with the same answer over and over again. They agree to everything, or they give identical numeric ratings to all items. It’s called “straight-lining,” and we often consider this a sign of poor data quality. I was intrigued by an approach to mitigating the problem I learned last week, shared…
There are good reasons to avoid phone surveys if you can. But if there is no alternative, it is critical to think about strategies for integrating cell phones into your outreach and sampling. Almost half (48%) of U.S. adults have no landline telephone service, while fewer than one in ten (9%) have no cell phone…
If ever there were evidence that phone surveys are dead, it’s this: Gallup, the undisputed king of telephone polling for decades, has withdrawn from the race. The firm announced last week that it will not conduct candidate polling for the 2016 presidential election. This comes after the miserable failure of its polling in 2012, which…
Difficult or lengthy surveys require hefty incentives, which unfortunately makes it tempting for some respondents to lie. We are facing this predicament in a survey right now. The survey requires two people from the same household who share household finances to complete parallel surveys. We are recruiting from an online research panel. Person 1 gets…
Despite the welcome trend towards online polling, telephone surveys are still surprisingly common, and telephone outreach makes sense for certain types of research. But if you ever use or commission phone surveys, take note: do not use automated dialing to make calls. Instead, have interviewers manually dial the numbers so you don’t get caught in…