Versta Research’s winter newsletter comes out next week, which will focus on some new approaches to faster (and cheaper) market research. In the meantime we have been thinking a good deal about where to invest in new methods and innovation during the coming year so that we continue to make our work better and smarter…
The purists in the polling industry who have always insisted that only probability sampling is valid may finally be accepting that their methods are dead. This is one happy conclusion I draw from the debate over AAPOR’s recent task force report on non-probability sampling, which is nicely summarized (and debated) as the lead article of…
There was a recent online discussion among colleagues who are active in the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) about experiences with and recommendations for survey analysis and statistics software. Many noted that traditional commercial software is getting extremely expensive, but that newer options do not always have the same capabilities that many of…
Or maybe we should say: why vendors SHOULD do everything twice BEFORE their work hits your desk and you send it back because you found errors. When it comes to something as complex and exacting as market research or public opinion polling, there are almost certainly mistakes the first time around. If a company does…
As market researchers pay more and more attention to the need for compelling data visualizations, Hans Rosling’s work with interactive data is becoming a catalyst for a fascinating new type of data visualization: animated statistical graphs. He uses them to show world social and economic trends over time, and the effect is exceptionally powerful. Here…
This week we published Versta Research’s quarterly newsletter with a feature article entitled “How to Design an Excellent Chart.” It addresses one critical piece of turning research data into compelling stories by focusing on the process of data visualization. For us, that process involves five steps:
I was the kid who skipped recess to help grade quizzes; the graduate student who delayed getting a degree because it meant the end of school; the professor who told students that he was now in the 33rd grade and still loved school. Even now I can’t resist reviewing great opportunities for more coursework and…
Who says that Olympic sports are the only way to bring nations and people together? In 2013, statistics will unite the world as governments, businesses, and not-for-profit organizations from 111 countries around the world work together via global seminars, conferences, and educational activities to celebrate and promote statistics. The International Year of Statistics is the…
I have never been a media poll watcher or politics junkie who tracks every new poll saying which candidate is favored to win. It is hard to see the point of spending so much time and money predicting the outcome of an event that will be known with certainty within a matter of days, weeks,…
What IS a credibility interval, you ask? It is a term making its way into mainstream market research just as Bayesian statistics are making their way into market research. A credibility interval provides a range of values, calculated using Bayesian statistical techniques, within which a statistical estimate is likely to fall. It is analogous to…