Author Archives: Mark Kupferman

The Salt Room (Orlando, Florida)

Some friends of mine are launching a new business in town call The Salt Room. It’s a new salt therapy treatment center which will be located in Orlando where folks with a variety of respiratory and skin diseases can come for relief of their symptoms. Basically, they have three rooms which are filled with salt — there is salt on the walls, on the floor, and in the air. And when you breathe it you get a concentrated feeling much like what you get when you breathe the salt air on the beach or in a deep salt cave. Continue reading

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Confirmit Flex Announced

Confirmit, one of the biggest online research software companies (they make the survey software that the big research firms use) has announced Confirmit Flex, a new application platform that makes it possible to create new data collection applications/tools very quickly while maintaining consistently high performance, scalability, and security. Continue reading

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Ruby Tabulation Software

Tim Macer of meaning ltd. wrote an article about Ruby Tabluation Software from the Australian firm Red Centre Software. I’ve always struggled way ways to automate the analysis and reporting on my ongoing surveys so I was intrigued. I signed up for the trial (they were very flexible — first they spent about an hour and a half with me on a webinar and then they let me try the full, unencumbered version of the software for more than a month) and fell in love with it. Continue reading

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PASW Statistics 18.0 (SPSS Statistics) New Features

SPSS has announced the new features that they plan to the upcoming release of PASW Statistics 18 (formerly know as SPSS Statistics 18, or SPSS Base). Continue reading

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20 Questions a Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results

I came across a particularly good article on the web site of the National Council on Public Polls by Sheldon Gawiser and G. Evans Witt entitled, “20 Questions a Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results.” Im not a journalist — but what I find particularly helpful about this article is that it helps me understand the way other people are viewing (or should be viewing) my research and gives me some great things to think about when I’m putting together my own projects. Continue reading

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Online Survey Content Security Doesn't Exist

There is no way to protect the content that you display in your survey from falling into the wrong hands. If you have a secret product or concept , your best bet for keeping it secret is not to test it using online research. Continue reading

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Selecting the Right Respondents for your Survey (Setting your Quotas)

Not all respondents are created equal. It’s true. Just because you can convince someone to take your survey doesn’t mean you necessarily want them to take your survey. In fact, ensuring that the right respondents take your survey (in the right proportions) is probably among the most important things you can do to ensure that you finish your project with survey results that you can use. Continue reading

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SPSS Statistics 17.0 Frustrates Me (a review)

I finally received my copy of SPSS Statistics 17 a couple of days ago and determined that I would try to push past my frustration with the “new and improved” Java-based interface and use it to analyze some data for a report I’m working on. But I can’t do it. There aren’t enough compelling features in the new version of SPSS to help me get past my frustration with the Java interface. So I’m sticking with SPSS 15. Continue reading

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Favorite Survey Software Packages for 2008

I know I said I wasn’t going to do this, but I get asked this question a lot so I’ve caving in. Here are my (current) favorite survey software packages: Qualtrics: (internet survey software) has a fantastic variety of question … Continue reading

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SPSS 18 New Features Survey

SPSS has been conducting a survey for the last couple of weeks to help them develop SPSS Statistics 18 (the “new” name of what has formerly just been known as SPSS 17). One generally imagines that the questions that are … Continue reading

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