As a citizen and voter, I am appalled to learn that our government routinely spies on the phone and digital communications of ordinary people and businesses and now harasses the journalists who are bringing it to our attention. And as a business owner in the market research industry, I am deeply concerned that government spying…
If you have ever been called to participate in a phone survey, you probably know the routine where you hear a question and then jump in with an answer. A good interviewer will remind you that she needs to read the entire question and all the answer options just to be sure that you offered…
Fifteen years ago the U.S. Census Bureau removed “Hispanic” from its question about race and instead created a stand-alone question to assess Hispanic ethnicity. It’s the reason we often advise our clients to ask about race and ethnicity separately, using questions similar to the Census Bureau’s, which are shown in Figure 1. Well, chances are…
A couple weeks ago we presented new data showing that response rates continue to decline. You can now expect that a typical, rigorously executed phone survey will yield a response rate in the single digits. Scientific evidence over the last decade has shown that high response rates do not necessarily yield more accurate surveys. In…
Most people who take surveys want to share their opinions, which is important for researchers hoping to get a few nuggets of data from willing respondents. The trouble is, if a survey it not written carefully, a respondent’s urgent desire to share their feelings may bias their answers to other questions. Two marketing professors at…
How big of a sample size do you really need? A recent article in the New York Times cited the following statistics: A small Voice of the Customer (VoC) research company called Mindshare Technologies collects satisfaction data from 175,000 respondents every day. That’s 60 million in a year. ForeSee, a small customer experience analytics firm…
It is hard to resist the temptation of asking “just one more question” when you’ve got an engaged respondent answering your survey questions online or on the phone. But it is crucial to do so because plenty of research shows that longer surveys result in bad data. Survey respondents may be willing to answer just…
In response to last week’s newsletter, Is Your Research Good Enough for The New York Times?, which discussed hurdles of getting online survey research reported by some news organizations, a customer reminded us that online surveys can be difficult to sell internally as well. Too many people have been burned by junk data from online…
One of the surprises of multi-mode research is that offering people a choice of how they want to complete a survey (online, by mail, by phone, etc.) does not necessarily boost response rates. An article in the most recent issue of Public Opinion Quarterly provides new evidence of this. The study showed that even in…
A good chart is the best way to understand the law of diminishing returns when it comes to sample size. So for our June 2011 newsletter we built an interactive graph for choosing sample size. It’s cool, educational, and useful. Moreover, it will show you just how mind boggling the numbers behind sampling can be. …