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…
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…
With the sad proliferation of silly surveys, non-scientific interest polls, and downright fraudulent polls, the research industry is stepping up with a number of key initiatives to combat the trend. Versta Research is part of that effort, and in August announced that we are part of the Transparency Initiative being developed by the American Association…
Another article was just published in the Spring 2010 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly exploring data quality differences between online surveys and phone surveys. The findings were based on a lab experiment in which subjects completed survey questions either on a computer or over an intercom system with an interviewer. Doing the study in a…
A research article the Winter 2009 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly provided some useful comparisons of data quality between phone surveys and various types of online surveys. The findings are based on an experiment that fielded identical questionnaires via three survey modes, and, not surprisingly, there are strengths and weaknesses to each type of survey.…
As an industry driven by data and information, market research and public opinion polling has seen dramatic changes in the last ten years and will no doubt change quickly and in big ways during the next ten. Looking back, here are what we consider to be the five biggest changes that shaped current challenges faced…