Archive for the ‘Survey Design’ Category

Cross Cultural Survey Guidelines

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

We are currently engaged in a research project for a client in South Korea, so issues of cross-cultural communication are top-of-mind for us right now.  Whether we rely on translations, or whether we speak the same language as our clients and respondents, it is important for researchers to understand differences in how people think and respond to research questions because data is always context sensitive. (more…)

Writing Successful Omnibus Survey Questions

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Choosing an omnibus survey can be a simple approach to getting survey data, because it is usually inexpensive and fast, and involves asking just a few questions.  But there is sometimes a downside to simplicity:  You have just a few questions to get that nugget of data you’re hoping to use as a news hook or to provide insight to your client.  If your key questions are off target, you can’t turn to other content in your survey to find something usable.

Here are four tips for writing omnibus survey questions to ensure that your effort is successful: (more…)

How Long Should a Survey Be?

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

Asking people to fill out long, tiresome, and boring surveys is a scourge of the research, polling, and survey industry.  (Another is asking them to fill out a survey every time they interact with you — see There Are Too Many Surveys.)  Asking people to fill out long surveys teaches them to avoid surveys in the future, and indeed we see survey participation rates continuing to decline.  But more importantly if you are the one who needs to rely on survey data, long surveys result in measurably lower data quality. (more…)

Five Research Design Tips

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Good research happens by design.  That is one of the reasons we enjoy writing research proposals.  Writing proposals is an exercise in research design, which is the place and time where you must think in strategic and smart ways about what you are going to do and how you are going to do it.  You must do it, that is, if you want your research to be any good.

How do we begin the research design process to ensure incisive and smart research that really helps our clients answer their critical questions?  Here are five key elements of the process for us, which we offer to you as tips for your own success when launching an internal research effort: (more…)

The Art of Asking Questions

Friday, March 19th, 2010

This quarter’s newsletter from Versta Research focuses on the art of asking questions.  We suggest that the importance of business questions far exceeds the importance of survey questions or focus group questions.  You can’t do the latter without the former, at least not very well, and research that is not specifically designed to answer clearly articulated business questions usually falls flat.

Here are some great quotes we found to keep in mind as guiding principles: (more…)

Conflicting Surveys Give You Insight

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

When multiple surveys about the same topic give different results, consider yourself lucky.  It provides an opportunity to dissect and understand the question you are trying to answer in a way you might not get otherwise.  A recent New York Times article provides a nice example when it comes to polls about health care. (more…)

When to Kick Out a Survey Respondent

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Nearly every survey begins with screening questions to ensure that only the people you are trying to reach are included in the survey.  For example, if you are conducting a survey of women, you need to ask about gender and kick out the men.  And because every question costs money, you want to qualify respondents quickly and terminate those who do not belong.

Here is a helpful hint: Do not actually terminate respondents until after you have asked all screening questions.  (more…)

When to Use Survey Monkey

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Versta Research uses Survey Monkey for its own Versta client satisfaction work.  At the end of an engagement we send clients a link and ask them for an evaluation of our work.

Why would a market research firm use such a primitive tool for its own feedback?  Are we like the cobbler who can’t afford shoes for our own children? (more…)

Focus on Solutions in PR Surveys

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

A public relations client early in my career gave this assessment of my work:  “Joe is strong at highlighting problems, but what I really care about is solutions.”  That was many years ago, after I left university teaching and started doing client work full time.  Her words have stayed with me and deeply shaped the work that Versta does.

I was reminded of it when I came across this survey about fear of needles.  It reports statistics on how many are fearful of needles and avoiding medical care as a result.  But it’s a story begging for a conclusion, which the press release authors and survey designers forgot to include.  It is a good example of highlighting problems, but not offering solutions.  If you’re a motivated reader of that story, you can fill in the conclusion by reading the paragraph at the bottom about the sponsoring healthcare company’s business, but how many people read that, and how often does such information make it into a story picked up by the press? (more…)

Better Data through Better Survey Design

Monday, September 14th, 2009

Market researchers complain a lot when they get data back from surveys and see that people have been “speeding” through their surveys or that people are not giving thoughtful responses.

But the problem is rarely “bad respondents” – instead the problem is lazy researchers.  When people discover that the survey they just agreed to take is boring, tedious, repetitive, or too long, they either quit altogether or they stop providing good answers.

(more…)