Earlier this year we trumpeted the idea of corporate research groups helping internal business partners do their own research. Sometimes is makes tons of sense, and sometimes not. So when it comes time for something more complicated, how do you educate a client about what matters and what doesn’t in terms of quality and rigor?…
The bowls of M&Ms, the soft drinks, the boxed sandwiches for the research team. The costs of a focus group really add up, don’t they? Well, suppose you brought in a troupe of improvisational comedians for the group. What would that cost? Um, how does $65,000 sound? That is a steep price for innovation, but…
If you ever have trouble separating all the hype of new methods and technology from the reality of whether those methods work, turn to the sober and decidedly non-hyped world of academic research. Some of the smartest people in the world build their careers by pursuing scientific research about research methods. They publish their results…
A perennial problem with open-ended survey questions is that respondents are lazy. It takes time and effort to think of good answers. And if the survey is self-administered online or on paper, it takes time and effort to write them out. But there are several things a savvy researcher can do. One of them is…
Every year I peruse the listings of summer college training courses on research methods. Part of it is nostalgia—I loved school. But I’m also looking for courses that will keep me and our Versta employees at the forefront of new knowledge and research techniques. (I didn’t learn R in graduate school, so yes, I took…
I recently came across this strange big book, the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, compiled by the Federal Judicial Center and the National Research Council. It’s not fun reading, but it provides an enormously useful and fascinating overview of what makes social and marketing research (and other kinds of scientific research, too) sufficiently rigorous to…
Over the last few years it has become clear that random digit dial telephone surveys—once the gold standard of survey research—are no longer so golden. But the New York Times has been a holdout among media giants, refusing to use online polls or to report findings from them. They have clung to the false idea…
One of the most useful techniques for in-depth qualitative interviewing is to ask respondents not only what they think, but what their friends, family, or colleagues think. It opens a whole new level of conversation and insight because all of the sudden respondents feel free to talk about their understanding and assessment of the world…
I used to get more worked up about survey answer scales than I do nowadays. I didn’t like even-numbered scales, including 1 to 10 scales (no midpoint!) or five point scales (too blunt!) or seven or nine point scales (not intuitive!). I liked zero to ten scales—and still do—because they offer good opportunity for respondent…
It’s been four years since the AMA convened a panel of thought leaders in market research to ponder questions about how social media fits into research practices and methods. An excerpt of our discussion was published in Marketing News in 2010. Last month, another top industry group (AAPOR) released its Emerging Technologies Task Force report…