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…
While it is tempting to use advanced programming to “force” good answers and good behavior out of survey respondents, don’t do it. Let respondents make mistakes. Let them mess up, and then review who messes up. This is one of the best ways to assess data quality in a survey, and trust me you will…
Putting together our winter newsletter, Five Free Data Sources Every Market Researcher Should Know, had me reviewing various sources of free data that we use nearly every day at Versta Research. The really big sources were top-of-mind and easy to come up with: data from The Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Institutes…
For those who feel far removed from the federal government shutdowns, I hope Versta Research’s winter newsletter will inspire an appreciation for what our government provides that is invaluable (and irreplaceable) in market research. Most researchers have no idea how much free data there is from the U.S. Federal Statistical System. They should, because unlike…
Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on all things that make our lives rich and rewarding, and my friend and colleague Henry (the farmer for whom I work on Saturdays) got me thinking about what I am thankful for in my work specifically, and in a new way. He asked us to think about who…
It’s the week after Independence Day. You’re doing your best to re-focus on work after the holiday break. If only it could have lasted a few days longer! I can’t bring you a few more days vacation, but I can offer this suggestion for making the holiday last just a wee bit longer: Bring some…
At first I thought this was the dumbest survey question ever. Why ask people what device they are using to take the survey, when you know from the platform meta-data what device they are using? Yes, even lame self-service survey platforms can (and should be) capturing information about device, operating system, IP address, start time,…
Almost certainly more than you think. If you are purchasing access to survey respondents from panel providers, or from survey software providers, or from any other source beyond your own list (and even then, how carefully are you controlling access to your survey?) you are probably getting fraudulent data from automated bots or from survey-taker…
Last year, Gartner, which charts new trends and emerging technologies via its “Hype Cycle” tracking, decided to abandon its tracking of Big Data. The reason? Big data, they said, has become so ubiquitous and embedded in so many other technologies, that it is no longer a thing of its own. And yet, how many of…
The hottest new job title invading the world of market research is “data scientist.” It has many of us starting to wonder, aren’t we all data scientists? Whether quantitative or qualitative, we spend most of our time collecting, manipulating, interpreting, and presenting data. Our methods are grounded in social science. Put the two together and…