Recent Additions

Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists: by Joel Best

While a fascinating read for all of us, this is most applicable if you're combining secondary research with your surveys. You'll never look at "facts" the same way again.

Amazon; COMMENTS: 0; CATEGORIES: Books | Management | Reporting; TAGS: Biased research | Market research | Public opinion polls | Secondary research | Statistics
How to Lie With Statistics: by Darrell Huff

There’s a reason this is still in print after 50 years, and that’s because we still fall for the same creative charting tricks.

Amazon; COMMENTS: 0; CATEGORIES: Books | Reporting; TAGS: Biased research | Charts | Statistics
Respondent incentives: When you've exhausted intangible payoffs, it's time to reach for the payola. Sometimes you'll get lucky and you can find an incentive that's cheap for you to provide—such as a product upgrade or free month's service—and sometimes it will be...; Read Article; BY: Ann Ray on April 23, 2008 | Last updated April 28, 2008; COMMENTS: 0; CATEGORIES: Respondents; TAGS: Incentives | Response rates | Sampling
Questions and Answers in Attitude Surveys: Experiments on Question Form, Wording, and Context: by Howard Schuman & Stanley Presser

Despite being in a quantitative industry, surveyors rarely conduct tests to measure what happens when we rearrange questions, add a neutral point in a scale, or make other adjustments. If you're ready to absorb some more advanced issues, complete with footnotes, this is a great book to pick up. Note that the 1996 copyright is simply a reprint of the 1981 text.

Amazon; COMMENTS: 0; CATEGORIES: Books | Questionnaires; TAGS: Developing surveys | Scales
Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing: by Harry Beckwith

When you want to broaden your perspective, this will help you understand how customer and employee satisfaction mixes with and reinforces other marketing efforts. While the author focuses on services, it's useful in any industry—we're all competing on intangibles these days.

Amazon; COMMENTS: 0; CATEGORIES: Books | Management; TAGS: Marketing | Service quality
Watching for overly broad questions: Recently I completed a telephone survey, and in the course of the 22 minute conversation (estimated at 12-15) I was asked: Would you recommend a friend or family member attend University of California Davis? Recommend for what? I'm aware of...; Read Article; BY: Ann Ray on March 25, 2008 | Last updated May 19, 2008; COMMENTS: 0; CATEGORIES: Questionnaires; TAGS: Customer satisfaction | Index metrics | Writing questions
Assembling a customer satisfaction picture: Most everyone wants to measure (and improve) customer satisfaction, but how? First and foremost, if your organization is new to surveys and doing this in-house, start simple! The goal of any survey is better information for decision-making, and a modest...; Read Article; BY: Ann Ray on March 7, 2008 | Last updated May 18, 2008; COMMENTS: 1; CATEGORIES: Management | Questionnaires; TAGS: Benchmarks & trending | Customer satisfaction | Developing surveys | Index metrics | Service quality
Preventing duplicate survey responses: A common concern is how to deal with duplicated survey responses. In practice, this is an issue when the benefit to multiple submits outweighs the effort of making them. For most surveys, the challenge is getting people to complete once....; Read Article; BY: Ann Ray on November 13, 2007 | Last updated April 28, 2008; COMMENTS: 0; CATEGORIES: Respondents | Technology; TAGS: Data validation | Passwords | Sampling | Web surveys
Balancing topics in your questionnaires: A client working on a project for a non-profit recently sent me two questionnaires: Version 1 Written by my client, and primarily driven by their contact, the CEO. The survey focused on evaluating the organization as a whole, though a...; Read Article; BY: Ann Ray on November 9, 2007 | Last updated May 18, 2008; COMMENTS: 0; CATEGORIES: Management | Questionnaires; TAGS: Developing surveys
Typical abandonment rates: One of my most popular articles via Web searches is about typical response rates. What many researchers forget to look at is the abandonment or completion rate. If you extend an invitation to someone for the survey (mail, e-mail, banner...; Read Article; BY: Ann Ray on September 27, 2007 | Last updated May 19, 2008; COMMENTS: 0; CATEGORIES: Respondents; TAGS: Incentives | Response rates | Sampling | Usability