Latest Articles
Hey there…have you heard of me?
In consumer and B2B market research circles we are often asked to assess market awareness and/or familiarity with brands, products and spokespeople or causes. These two related, but separate constructs, represent the first steps on the pathway from prospect to customer. Awareness should be measured in two ways – unaided and aided. Unaided awareness is […]
Census Regions – What it means for Hispanic Sample
Census regions are probably the last thing you think about when procuring Hispanic sample. Language, acculturation, and country of origin are likely at the top of your list. However, census regions are linked to all of the above. The Hispanic population distribution in the U.S. is considerably different than the rest of the population. For […]
Sampling and Other Considerations for Mobile Research
In a prior post I highlighted an interesting statistic – for any given project market researchers can now expect up to 40% response on smartphones. This percentage will continue to increase. The question then becomes one of what do we know about mobile responders and can this be applied to our sampling plans? First and […]
Three keys for designing effective mobile surveys
At the recent MRA Corporate Researchers Conference the training organization Research Rockstar presented a course on designing device agnostic surveys. The trend is clear that more and more surveys are being taken on smartphones and tablets. Desktop computers still account for the majority of responses, but for any given project market researchers can now expect […]
Top 2 Box Score – Avoid the Pitfall
Recently when giving my desk a much needed cleaning I came across an article by Jerry Thomas with the firm Decision Analyst. His whitepaper focused on the use of the top two box score as a measure for conveying scores to survey scales. The top box score is the sum of percentages for the top […]
More from Research Access
“How To” Posts
Using iPads to Survey Amusement Park Visitors
Like many companies, Cedar Fair Entertainment Company had traditionally done surveys the old-fashioned way – with paper, pencil and clipboards. Mike Iott, Cedar Fair’s Market Research Manager, had to hand-create 12 reports monthly, one for each of Cedar Fair’s regional amusement parks. This year Mike successfully transitioned Cedar Fair’s in-park survey program from paper to […]
10 Tips for Mobile Diary Studies
Earlier this month, Chris Neal of Chadwick Martin Bailey shared with members of the New England chapter of the Marketing Research Association tips for running mobile diary studies, based on lessons learned from a recent project. For the Council of Research Excellence, CMB studied mobile video usage to understand: How much time is spent on […]
What to Consider When Selecting Markets for Qualitative Research
Originally published in Alert!, the magazine of the Marketing Research Association. Pittsburgh or Portland? Los Angeles or Las Vegas? San Antonio or San Diego? Where should you hold your next focus groups? If you’re a local car dealer in Omaha, the answer is pretty obvious. But what if you’re doing research for a national organization? […]
Why Panelists Abandon Surveys
If the greatest challenge of conducting market research is getting a qualified sample to respond to a survey instrument, the second greatest challenge has to be getting them to complete that instrument. In almost any survey any of us have ever conducted, we’ve seen the dreaded “Number abandoned” statistic, describing the number of people who […]
The Mere Exposure Effect: Advertising to the Subconscious
A recent Adweek column bemoaned the absence of brand names from the first 29 seconds of many 30-second ads. It advised introducing the brand earlier and mentioning it more often, as the author explained that otherwise people forget the name of the brand. The author offered the right advice but for the wrong reasons. He […]
Exaggerated Self-reporting of Mobile Phone Use
We asked some of our favorite bloggers to provide us a “lost gem” – a great article that deserved wider response than it received the first time it was published. This piece by Ashley Richards was originally published June 27 for Survey Post. A recent article in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication examines the accuracy of self-reported […]
Respondents as Robots
We’re counting down our Top 10 blog posts of 2013. Coming in at #9 is this science-fiction inspired post originally published August 1. Besides leading questions, another common mistake I see in the draft questionnaires I’m sent is treating respondents like robots. Something about becoming a survey author inspires us to suddenly think of customers, […]
What Apple Got Wrong with Its Question about the 5c
The most popular research tweet on the Twitter #MRX hashtag in the past fortnight was Tom Ewing’s tweet of this screencap: Cor, I can see why Apple don’t make a big thing about their market research – pages of grids, stone age stuff. #mrx pic.twitter.com/uV1rbPDTSq — To Mewing! (@tomewing) May 1, 2014 Some folks on […]
Data Visualization Lesson 1: Examine the Y-Axis
Editor’s Note: Today I am pleased to introduce you to a new regular contributor to Research Access, Dr. Dana Griffin. Dr. Griffin will be starting off by doing a series of lessons on data visualization, beginning with today’s entry. It is incredibly easy to draw erroneous conclusions from data that is presented visually. Nowhere has this […]
Is the Ideal Survey Length 20 Minutes?
We’re counting down our Top 10 blog posts of 2013. Coming in at #8 is this webinar recap originally published August 8. As part of the CASRO webinar series, Inna Burdein, Ph.D., director of panel analytics with the NPD Group, discussed her research into survey length and effort. The session moderator – John Bremer, the […]
Ask Me No Leading Questions, and I’ll Tell You No Lies
The most common problem with the draft questionnaires that are sent to me is the use of leading questions. A leading question suggests the answer the survey author is looking for and often unintentionally reflects the author’s bias. As a result, the answers to such questions overstate actual support for the item being researched. Leading […]
