Category Archives: methodology

SPSS Promotes Self By Trash Talking Internet Survey Research

SPSS recently put out a news release (which has been picked up by at least two news sites CRM Today and TMCnet) whose sole purpose appears to be to scare companies away from using the plethora of survey research tools in favor of … Continue reading →

Posted on July 28, 2007 by Mark Kupferman | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

20 Top Tips to Writing Effective Surveys

Martin Day, a Director of SurveyGalaxy, wrote an interesting article entitled "20 Top Tips to Writing Effective Surveys." The article is simply laid out, easy to read, and offers some pretty simple straightforward tips for writing online surveys (or offline … Continue reading →

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Mark Kupferman | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

How big should your sample be?

Is it enough to survey 100 people or are you only going to get useful results if you survey 1,000 people? The answer, unfortunately, really depends on the questions you are asking, the likely results, and your preferred "margin of … Continue reading →

Posted on December 9, 2006 by Mark Kupferman | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

What is the impact of offering incentives?

Is it bad to offer incentives to people who complete your surveys? On more than one occasion I’ve had to answer this question for clients and others who were concerned that by offering a potential respondent some kind of perk … Continue reading →

Posted on December 9, 2006 by Mark Kupferman | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Top Box, Bottom Box, Mean Score

I was poking around in Google today and came upon an interesting article in the October, 2000 issue of hte CustomerSat.com monthly newsletter (appropriately entitled "CustomerSat.com Connections" about the relevance of using top box ratings, bottom box ratings and mean … Continue reading →

Posted on November 16, 2006 by Mark Kupferman | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Volunteer vs. Random Online Survey Panels

Research provider Knowledge Networks (Menlo Park, CA) has published an interesting nine page white paper entitled The Decisions Maker’s Guide to Online Research. Although the document is clearly geared towards illustrating how the Knowledge Networks panel methodology is better than … Continue reading →

Posted on October 23, 2006 by Mark Kupferman | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Overview of SPSS Dimensions

SPSS recently announced the release of SPSS Dimensions 4.0, the latest incarnation of its enterprise survey and analysis suite that does everything from helping you create surveys to analyzing the data to generating reports. Before looking into the new features … Continue reading →

Posted on October 22, 2006 by Mark Kupferman | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tim Macer presentation on Multi-Model Research

About a year ago Tim Macer gave a presentation at the SPSS Directions Conference entitled “Weaving, not drowning: An update on take-up and best practices in Mixed- and Multi- mode research.” Long, perhaps even academic sounding title, but actually extremely … Continue reading →

Posted on October 22, 2006 by Mark Kupferman | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Perseus hosts webcast on incentive strategies

In my experience, the use of incentives, whether it is the opportunity to win a prize in a drawing/sweepstakes or points towards some kind of special reward, can make a big difference in the response rate to an online survey. … Continue reading →

Posted on October 21, 2006 by Mark Kupferman | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

MarketTools Introduces Zoomerang Online Focus Groups

MarketTools has introduced Zoomerang Online Focus, a full-service online focus group service that provides participant recruitment, moderation and reporting. The service looks fairly easy to use and similar in process to traditional focus groups: First Zoomerang creates a discussion guide … Continue reading →

Posted on October 21, 2006 by Mark Kupferman | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment