For some reason I’m always a little surprised that people tell the truth on surveys. I like to think of my “healthy skepticism” as a professional asset, because it forces us to check and double check, corroborate and triangulate. Before we commit to the findings of a research effort, we need to feel 100% sure…
Making sense of data and statistics is not just a matter of being clear and precise, nor is it just a matter of keeping things simple (though all of these are important). To make numbers really compelling, we need to relate them to people’s experiences. If we want our audience to grasp the importance of…
You might think that a research firm specializing in surveys would be glad to see a world in which customer feedback surveys are everywhere. Not so. I take part in a lot of webinars, and unfortunately I am asked to complete a survey (at least one) every time I attend. Some websites ask me to…
In an article published some years ago entitled Data-Driven Journalism, Walker Sands, a Chicago-based marketing and PR agency, outlined two ways to get media placement for your company or your client with research. Their premise was that journalists and readers are hungry for interesting stories, and in today’s data-driven world, some of the most interesting…
It was a long, arduous process (and still is), but it was worth it: Versta Research has been awarded certification for compliance to ISO 27001! This is one of the most widely recognized and internationally accepted information security standards. Certification puts Versta Research among a small handful of market research and insights firms that undergo…
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…
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…
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…
The COVID-19 pandemic decimated the research industry’s respondent panels, and here’s the impact it is having on our (and your) research today. All of a sudden, research came to a halt in early 2020. Clients wanted their fieldwork put on hold for six months or more. Panel companies stopped investing in and nurturing their panels.…
One luxury of doing primary research is that you can get data perfectly tailored to the problem you need to solve. Primary research allows you to design how data will be elicited, and how, exactly, attitudes and behaviors are measured. Hence, you get the insight you need. If you don’t have perfectly tailored data, you…