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Tag Archives: survey design

Survey Respondents Are Not Strategists

Survey Respondents Are Not Strategists

Data Collection, Survey DesignBy Joe HopperDecember 19, 2018

So why are we asking them to do our jobs? I ask this question a lot when we execute surveys for marketing and business strategists. They’re smart people who want us to synthesize lots of data into compelling stories for their business clients. They love to assemble data into dashboards, visualizations, and grids. But they…

How to Write Surveys: 25 Best Practices

How to Write Surveys: 25 Best Practices

Survey Design, Survey TipsBy Joe HopperNovember 8, 2018

In our fall newsletter we purposely glossed over the “standard” best practices in writing surveys that one typically reads about in text books or learns in research methods classes. We wanted to give you a deep-dive into our own five last steps in writing a questionnaire that focused on advanced topics like randomization, programming logic,…

Five Last Steps in Writing a Questionnaire

Five Last Steps in Writing a Questionnaire

Survey Design, Survey TipsBy Joe HopperOctober 24, 2018

In quantitative survey research, the questionnaire affects nearly everything else that is critical to a study: the data, the analysis, and the findings. And because of this, writing surveys is the component of research that requires more on-the-job experience than any other. It requires thinking on multiple levels about all other aspects of the research…

Cut the Marketing Jargon from Your Surveys

Cut the Marketing Jargon from Your Surveys

Survey Tips, Topics in MarketingBy Joe HopperSeptember 26, 2018

Like other professionals, those of us in marketing and market research sometimes fall too much in love with our specialized and often ridiculous language. It is mostly okay when we communicate with each other. But if we are communicating with customers or consumers, beware. Our words may not be their words. And since our research…

What Makes A Survey Scientific?

What Makes a Survey Scientific?

Data Analysis & Analytics, Data Collection, Methods & Tools, Public Polling, Sampling, Survey DesignBy Joe HopperAugust 22, 2018

Surveys run the gamut from silly to serious, and from sloppy to scientific. Occasionally we do something silly if a client insists (though we generally advise against it). But we never do sloppy surveys, and we hope you never do them either. Lean as far as possible towards rigor and science within reasonable constraints of…

How to Measure Shopper Strategies

How to Measure Shopper Strategies

Survey Design, Topics in MarketingBy Joe HopperMay 16, 2018

A feature story on the Versta Research website is about mapping shopper segments onto buyer segments. That story may have had you asking how we measured and defined those segments in the first place. The answer: by devising careful and nuanced survey questions to capture what our qualitative research partners learned about how consumers assess,…

Three Easy Lessons from a Bad New York Times Survey

Three Easy Lessons from a Bad New York Times Survey

Data Analysis & Analytics, Public Polling, Sampling, Survey DesignBy Joe HopperMay 9, 2018

Surveys don’t get much simpler than this. It is from the New York Times, which I typically admire for its rigorous reporting, thoughtful analysis, and forward-thinking experimentation with data visualization. But even with such simplicity, this survey (published on April 22, 2018) manages to be terrible in at least three big ways: It asks a…

Reasons to Avoid an Other-Specify Box

Data Collection, Survey Design, Survey TipsBy Joe HopperJanuary 24, 2018

If you are a smart person and you only occasionally try your hand at writing a survey, here is something you may find yourself doing: adding an open box at the end of every question so that respondents can “write in” their own answer if the pre-listed answers do not fit them. Our clients do…

Reasons Customers Blow Off Your Surveys

Data Collection, Survey Design, Survey TipsBy Joe HopperOctober 11, 2017

If you deploy your own surveys trying to solicit feedback from your customers, you know how hard it is to get them to respond. There are many good reasons why customers ignore surveys nowadays. Here is one potential culprit: You may be asking them for information you already know. If you are, they know that…

Responsive Surveys Go Way Beyond Mobile

Responsive Surveys Go Way Beyond Mobile

Data Collection, Future Trends, Survey DesignBy Joe HopperSeptember 27, 2017

If you design surveys that adapt well to mobile devices, you can feel proud. Current estimates are that only about half of all market research surveys are mobile-friendly. According to Research Now, an online panel that fields thousands of surveys from research vendors like Versta, just 15% are fully optimized for mobile use. But now…

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