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…)
Archive for the ‘Survey Design’ Category
How Long Should a Survey Be?
Friday, April 23rd, 2010Five Research Design Tips
Friday, April 16th, 2010Good 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, 2010This 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…)
When to Kick Out a Survey Respondent
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Nearly 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, 2009Versta 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…)
Better Data through Better Survey Design
Monday, September 14th, 2009Market 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.
Three Ways to Improve Online Verbatim Data
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009Good open-ended questions and thoughtful responses to these questions can yield amazingly rich and insightful data. But given the generally poor quality of responses to open-ended question in mail surveys, some have speculated that open-ended questions in online surveys would suffer a similar fate.
Research seems to show this is not the case. Further, a study just published in the Summer 2009 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly outlines three ways that we can improve the quality of responses in on-line surveys: