Posts Tagged ‘population’
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011
These days most researchers agree that if you want to do a random sample phone survey of the U.S. population, you ought to include cell phones. More than one-quarter of the population do not have landline telephones at home. Those who do have landline telephones are less likely than ever to answer them, and less likely than ever to participate in surveys.
But it is not easy to include cell phones. The sampling protocols and the post-stratification weighting become more complicated. You need to account for a higher probability of cell phone owners being in your sample, because most of them also have landlines. You can’t use automated or predictive dialing to call cell phone numbers. You can’t target geography as well, because area codes and exchanges have become mobile. And people get mad at you if they have to pay for incoming calls, so you need to offer cash.
What’s the bottom line effect on costs for a survey that includes cell phones? A recent study sponsored by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) documents the following: (more…)
Tags: bias, Data Collection, Market Research, phone surveys, population, public opinion, Public Polls, research, Sampling
Posted in Data Collection, Future Trends, Market Research, Public Polls, Sampling | No Comments »
Thursday, June 9th, 2011
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. It may even give you more sympathy for the majority of people who just don’t “get it” or believe it when it comes to statistical sampling.
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Tags: charts, Market Research, population, public opinion, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling, survey respondents, visualizing data
Posted in Charts and Data Visualization, Data Collection, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Omnibus Surveys, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling | No Comments »
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Telephone surveys are still considered the gold standard for rigorous public opinion polling and market research. The reason is that virtually every household in the U.S. can be reached by telephone, and therefore we have careful methods of determining the probability that any individual person is included in a sample to be surveyed. Knowing this probability is at the core of statistical inference, which makes mathematical purists very happy.
Here are the steps involved in conducting a rigorous “gold standard” telephone survey of the U.S. population: (more…)
Tags: Data Collection, Internet, Market Research, population, public opinion, Public Polls, Sampling
Posted in Data Collection, Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Public Polls, Sampling | No Comments »
Friday, February 5th, 2010
A research article the Winter 2009 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly provided some useful comparisons of data quality between phone surveys and various types of online surveys. The findings are based on an experiment that fielded identical questionnaires via three survey modes, and, not surprisingly, there are strengths and weaknesses to each type of survey.
Phone vs. Online Surveys: Strengths & Weaknesses
As reflected in the table above, the article is rather technical. But there are two key summary points worth learning from the study: (more…)
Tags: bias, data quality, Internet, Online Surveys, phone surveys, population, Sampling, survey, survey respondents
Posted in Data Collection, Methods & Tools, Online Surveys, Sampling | No Comments »
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
The U.S. Census is one of the most useful tools for research and marketing because it tells you how many people fit specific demographic profiles and where they live. It started out as a simple count of how many people live in each state in order to allocate congressional seats. But it has since become a rich source of insight, with information about Americans’ age, family composition, work status, income, education, housing, and more.
While the Census provides basic tabulations and counts on its website, you can also query the data yourself to answer specific, customized questions that you are unable to find otherwise. In fact, using this data is so easy that Versta no longer uses the Census’ rather difficult and ever-changing “fact finder” features. We have downloaded the data along with a codebook, and use a statistics program to run specific queries and counts of anything we need. (more…)
Tags: census, demographics, Market Research, population, statistics, survey
Posted in Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
Mistakes to Avoid when Conducting a Public Relations Survey
Surveys and polls can be powerful tools to understand what people are thinking and doing, and they can provide good data for public relations efforts and community outreach. Unfortunately they can also be gimmicks, which erodes trust in polling and in the organizations sponsoring them.
(more…)
Tags: bias, census, population, public opinion, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling, trust
Posted in Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling | 1 Comment »