Do-It-Yourself Survey Research Roundup
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Sat, Feb 20, 2010
Vaughn Mordecai wrote Enough is Enough:
There's been quite a bit tweeted recently about the abundance of market research related sites, groups, blogs, communities, etc. available to the market researcher... It all becomes a little bit overwhelming (STOP THE MADNESS...KIDDING...KIND OF)....fifteen market research related news wires and blog posts, ...all of the groups on LinkedIn and Facebook, the lists on Twitter, and the other "non-association" market research websites .... Has enough become enough?
Ten years ago it was possible to read all the major market-research magazines and keep up to date. There wasn't that much being written about research. Now, even the most avid blog reader knows that they are missing many good posts and many good online discussions. And the situation will get worse: more and more vendors and research firms are beginning to blog or are increasing the frequency of their blogging.
To do my own small part to help you cope with this, each weekend I will try to bring you the best of the last week's posts.
Do-It-Yourself Surveys
Brandon Bertelsen, Bernie Malinoff, Josh Mendelsohn and Annie Petit united this week to blog about do-it-yourself surveys. Here are their pros and cons:
Pros
- Inexpensive
- Quickly deploy a survey
- Get exactly what you want
- Work around internal and external research organizations
Cons
- Lack of the impartiality of using an outside researcher
- Lack of a third party to review the questionnaire
- Poor sample design
- Lack of resources to analyze and report the findings
- Bad data from badly developed questions:
- Leading questions
- Missing options
- Industry jargon
- Survey jargon
- Double-barreled questions
- Web 2.0 questions
Brandon and Bernie both offer good advice to researchers struggling to find a role in a DIY world. Brandon writes, "Whether you are a supplier or an internal research department, taking a few minutes from your busy day to review a questionnaire or help someone understand the data can go a long way towards building trust and engagement. Basic tips [and being] an additional pair of eyes to review (not redo) the questionnaire makes you a partner, not a hindrance." Bernie writes, "Focus on adding value, helping to develop/build question libraries, conduct advanced statistical analyses of Attitudinal & Behavioral databases, and help those clients establish best practices. This paradigm shift is happening for lots of different reasons, not just economics. Embrace the wave."
The posts:
The Come-On-Now Social
Speaking of "embrace the wave", in Marketing Research Mindset: Stop Debating ‘Social' Research, Ted Morris offers five tips for MR to embrace social research. Ted quotes a Research magazine story, "60% of the firms surveyed said they were using social media for research purposes, but when asked where social media fits in their organisation ...only 12% chose research." Ted's tips:
- Recognize that "social media won't go away but respondents have."
- "Stop hiring more MR professionals."
- Clients are adopting MROCs and owned-media platforms.
- "Stop acting like an accounting function."
- "If you try to prove ROI, you will die."
Meta-thinking
In Thinking about How People Think, Margaret Roller writes "Whether we know it or not researchers are always thinking about how people think. Whether it is explicit or implicit in our work, we are thinking about how people think from the very beginning - the conceptualization of research design - through to the very end - the analysis and interpretation of research findings. Everything we do, really, is about matching research techniques, question design, fieldwork protocols, data coding, and final analysis with the reality of how people think."
Next Week
Got a post you want me to consider for next week's roundup? Do your part to help me cut through the clutter as well. Please email me the URL and full text of the post at "jhenning" at Vovici.com.