Posts Tagged ‘phone surveys’
Thursday, June 13th, 2013
Even if you don’t care about political polling, or the fact that Gallup consistently overestimates support for Republican candidates, it is worth paying attention to how Gallup is trying to fix its problems with surveys and polling.
They are not happy with how poorly their polls have fared (who would be?), and they have teams of smart people trying to figure out what is wrong. Given their high profile, they are making the process and findings of their investigations public, and we have much to learn from that.
Last week they released their findings from an extensive review, which involved outside experts as well as internal ones. It is fascinating to read, because they identify 13 suspects in their survey process that all companies who do survey research should always be thinking about: (more…)
Tags: phone surveys, Public Polls, reliability, research design, validity
Posted in Data Analysis & Analytics, Data Collection, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Omnibus Surveys, Public Polls, Sampling | No Comments »
Thursday, November 29th, 2012
If there is one super important lesson to be learned from this year’s round of election polling, it is that online surveys work. Google Consumer Surveys, which use non-probability online samples, predicted the election far better than Gallup did. And online surveys, overall, outperformed telephone surveys.
The New York Times’ Nate Silver compiled polling results from 23 organizations that conducted at least five surveys in the final three weeks of the campaign. He calculated how far their projections were from the actual outcome of the presidential race. Google (a fully automated, online solution) came in second place, predicting the actual outcome within 1.6 percentage points. Gallup (using “gold standard” telephone methods) came in last, predicting the outcome within 7.2 percentage points.
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Tags: Online Surveys, phone surveys, Public Polls
Posted in Data Collection, Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Online Surveys, Public Polls, Public Relations | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 14th, 2012
I have never been a media poll watcher or politics junkie who tracks every new poll saying which candidate is favored to win. It is hard to see the point of spending so much time and money predicting the outcome of an event that will be known with certainty within a matter of days, weeks, or months. But elections are an amazing way to see survey research methods in action, and there are few opportunities to have those methods validated so quickly, accurately, and unforgivingly than political polling.
What did we learn from the polls this election season? (more…)
Tags: methods, models, Online Surveys, phone surveys, Public Polls, research, statistics, survey
Posted in Future Trends, Market Research, Public Polls | Comments Off
Friday, September 21st, 2012
During a presidential election year there is no escaping the flurry of public opinion polling and the intense scrutiny that surveys get from the media. But love it or hate it, there are excellent reasons to pay close attention to this year’s political polling.
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Tags: best practices, journalism, media, methods, news, phone surveys, public opinion, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling, survey, Survey Design
Posted in Data Collection, Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling, Survey Design | Comments Off
Thursday, August 2nd, 2012
Is this YOUR distracted survey respondent?
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 fact, it turns out that high response rates can actually hurt the accuracy of surveys.
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Tags: Online Surveys, phone surveys, response rates, Sampling, survey, survey respondents
Posted in Data Collection, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Online Surveys, Public Polls | Comments Off
Thursday, July 19th, 2012
Survey response rates are now staggeringly low—in the single digits. A typical response rate for a relatively high-budget, carefully executed phone survey is merely 9%, down from 36% just fifteen years ago. Here are the numbers from research conducted earlier this year by the Pew Center:
Survey Response Rates Continue to Decline
If you want to throw money at a survey and try really hard to boost your response rate (the high-effort survey shown in the chart above), you can likely get up to 20% to 25%. But you will need to:
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Tags: phone surveys, public opinion, Public Polls, response rates, Sampling, survey
Posted in Data Collection, Public Polls, Sampling | Comments Off
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
Data quality will suffer if respondents are bored with long surveys
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 one more question, but at some point the quality of information you get from them declines. Survey respondents become inattentive and offer lazy answers, or worse, they offer quick random answers just to get the survey over with.
At Versta Research we have a few rules of thumb for survey length based on (1) academic and industry research measuring data quality, (2) conversations with colleagues and suppliers throughout the industry, and (3) our ongoing experience of what works and what does not work. The maximum survey lengths we typically recommend are: (more…)
Tags: data, Data Collection, data quality, Market Research, Online Surveys, phone surveys, social media, survey, Survey Design, survey respondents, survey technology
Posted in Data Collection, Survey Design, Survey Tips | Comments Off
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
If you have never done the hard work of interviewing your customers (or potential customers) by phone for surveys or in-depth interviews, you should. It will give you deeper insights into your critical business questions than any expert analyses about buyer behavior, marketing trends, or business best practices.
If you HAVE done the hard work of phone surveys, then besides deeper research insights into your business, we expect you will have a deeper appreciation for this holiday survey, written by Mitch Pravatiner, which is written in exactly the format that telephone interviewers typically see. We have worked with Mitch in the past, and he is a true pro when it comes to telephone interviewing. He recently shared this via aapor-net, which is a discussion group of research professionals who belong to the American Association of Public Opinion Research.
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas . . .
Hello, this is [NAME OF INTERVIEWER] from [NAME OF ORGANIZATION], an opinion research organization. Tonight we’re calling people across the country to find out what’s going on in their homes on the night before Christmas. Please rest assured that this is not a sales call, and that everything you tell us will be kept confidential. Would you be willing to participate? (more…)
Tags: phone surveys
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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 | Comments Off
Thursday, September 29th, 2011
Is it true that the Associated Press refuses to carry stories from online surveys? Yes, as odd as that seems nowadays. But news media face a difficult problem given how easy it is to conduct biased public opinion polling, especially now with online panels and social networks. So some news organizations like the Associated Press (AP), The New York Times, and ABC News have developed guidelines that specify for a survey or public opinion poll to be valid and reliable, it must be conducted by telephone.
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Tags: Data Collection, Internet, journalism, omnibus, Online Surveys, phone surveys, public opinion, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling
Posted in Data Collection, Omnibus Surveys, Online Surveys, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling | Comments Off