Archive for the ‘Methods & Tools’ Category
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
Given how common mapping capabilities have become via the Internet and smartphones, it is surprising that we don’t see more geographic mapping in market research. Researchers nearly always look at customer demographics, and a key component of a person’s demographic profile is where he or she lives. This data is far more compelling if you can present it visually with maps.
It does not take super fancy (and expensive) mapping software or specialized firms to create accurate, useful, and compelling maps from market research data. We recently created maps for a client showing where in a three-county region their best customers lived. Everything we used to make these maps was free and publicly available for download on the Internet. Here are the steps we used: (more…)
Tags: Market Research, visualizing data
Posted in Charts and Data Visualization, Data Analysis & Analytics, Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Presenting Research | No Comments »
Thursday, December 29th, 2011
Even if you are not involved in political polling, it is worth paying attention to the methods and best practices of political pollsters. One reason is that few other areas of research offer a way to completely validate one’s methods. Pollsters are using sampling and survey methods to predict the behaviors of a much larger population. Then in just one day that population behaves, we get a near-perfect count of exactly how they behaved, and we know whether the methods worked.
Several industry colleagues have recently been debating the merits of calculating and reporting “margins of error” in political polling, and pointed us to some surprising data from The New York Times: (more…)
Tags: journalism, public opinion, Public Polls, Sampling, statistics, survey
Posted in Market Research, Methods & Tools, Omnibus Surveys, Public Polls, Sampling | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
In Versta Research’s Winter 2011 Newsletter, published just this week, we describe a simple method for estimating how long it will take respondents to complete surveys.
Here we offer the “Versta Digest” version as a handy reference card. Once you get the hang of it, you don’t need the examples and explanation. You just need to know the rules. We recommend reading the full article first, so you know what we’re talking about when it comes to “points.” Then, when you need a refresher or a reference source, consult these rules: (more…)
Tags: Data Collection, Online Surveys, phone surveys, research, Survey Design
Posted in Data Collection, Methods & Tools, Online Surveys, Survey Design | No Comments »
Thursday, December 1st, 2011
Over the last few years we have wondered whether spreadsheet software like Excel will soon make statistics software like SPSS or SAS obsolete.
Spreadsheets have amazingly powerful and often intuitive capabilities. They have many of the statistical functions we use every day. Younger people entering our profession rarely know programs like SPSS or SAS, and we see them turning to Excel to generate frequencies, calculate means and proportions, create charts from data, and so on. The same goes for our customers. Many do not have statistical software, so when they need numbers and statistics, they often work in Excel.
But Versta Research continues to invest in advanced statistical software rather than doing our work in Excel for three important reasons: (more…)
Tags: analytics, software packages, statistics
Posted in Charts and Data Visualization, Data Analysis & Analytics, Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011
Versta Research is a strong advocate for using online panels for surveys. As telephone usage and technology have changed, phone surveys are increasingly difficult and expensive, and they are not necessarily more rigorous than other methods.
But that doesn’t mean “anything goes” when it comes to fielding market research surveys and public opinion polls through online panels. Many panels are poorly managed and overused, and some have high proportions of fraudulent respondents. While conducting good research through online panels is possible, it requires a great deal of effort and oversight from smart people who know what they are doing.
I was reminded of this recently as we worked with a newer panel provider that recruits respondents through not-for-profit organizations. (more…)
Tags: Internet, Online Panels, Online Surveys, Sampling, social media
Posted in Data Collection, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Online Surveys, Sampling | No Comments »
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
MaxDiff is a powerful method and it is increasingly popular among market researchers. But it is not always the best choice for measuring the importance of attributes, and here’s why.
Suppose you want to measure the importance of 12 attributes for a new product or service. If you know ahead of time that consumers are going to say that all 12 are extremely important to them, then MaxDiff is an excellent method for differentiating among the attributes so you can focus on the top two or three that matter most.
But what if you don’t know that all 12 attributes are extremely important? Maybe none of them are. Maybe they run the gamut from unimportant to extremely important. The problem with MaxDiff is that it only tells you the importance of attributes relative to each other, but it won’t tell you whether the attributes are important. The MaxDiff model will assign ratio-level numbers so that you can rank and quantify the importance of each attribute vis-à-vis the others. But it will not anchor the attributes in a meaningful way. (more…)
Tags: conjoint, Market Research, MaxDiff, Survey Design
Posted in Data Analysis & Analytics, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Survey Design | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
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 surveys.
One problem with online panels is that some respondents (a small minority) participate only to get paid in cash or redeemable credits. If these respondents are not providing thoughtful answers, the data are suspect. All panels have the problem, though some are worse than others; reputable sample providers work hard to identify and remove fraudulent respondents from their panels.
But we should not rely on panel providers alone to ensure valid data. Buyers of panel surveys should always look at the data case by case to identify and remove suspicious cases. Here are typical indicators of potentially bad data:
(more…)
Tags: data quality, Online Surveys, open-ends, survey respondents
Posted in Data Collection, Methods & Tools, Online Surveys, Survey Tips | No Comments »
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
Two researchers at the U.S. Census Bureau recently outlined an emerging innovation in survey research that could reverse the trend towards passive, boring, self-administered surveys that characterizes much online research. The idea is to use internet avatars in real-time interviewing with survey respondents.
Beyond just the heightened interest of having an animated survey, the avatars would be programmed to register and interpret respondents’ verbal answers, facial expressions, and body language through webcams.
(more…)
Tags: Data Collection, insight, Internet, Market Research, Online Surveys, stories, survey technology
Posted in Data Collection, Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools, New Products and Innovation, Online Surveys | No Comments »
Thursday, September 15th, 2011
MaxDiff is a survey method used to measure the importance of product features. Subsets of features are presented, and respondents are asked to select which feature is most important and which feature is least important. Its advantage over other techniques is that by forcing a choice from among multiple features, it more strongly differentiates the features if customers are prone to say that all features are important or attractive.
(more…)
Tags: conjoint, Market Research, segmentation
Posted in Charts and Data Visualization, Data Analysis & Analytics, Market Research, Methods & Tools, New Products and Innovation, Presenting Research | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
It's pretty, but it's chartjunk
Turning data into stories involves not just words, but pictures as well. In the world of quantitative market research, that usually means charts, graphs, and tables. Moreover, just like poorly written sentences that often complicate rather than clarify data, charts and graphs in market research too often suffer from “chartjunk,” as Edward Tufte calls it. Any superfluous details, design elements, or decorations that do not tell the viewer something new about the data are chartjunk.
At Versta Research we write a lot of reports. We also revise others’ reports to help our clients find and more clearly present research stories to their management teams. Here are three of the more common chart design mistakes we see and help our clients avoid: (more…)
Tags: charts, Market Research, satisfaction research, stories, visualizing data
Posted in Charts and Data Visualization, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Presenting Research, Turning Data into Stories | No Comments »
