Two Things to Take Away From the Recent Poll Failure? in Alberta

There will be much hand wringing, considerable hyperbole, and lots of pseudo theories/ explanations for why the polls did not foresee the Conservative majority coming in the 2012 Alberta provincial election. Some attention will inevitably be placed on the methodological rigour of the polling methods but the size of the difference between the polls and the outcome is stunning. [...]

Does your scale have a tipping point? Questionnaire Design

Question scales come in two types: seesaws and stairs.  The main point of differentiation of the two ideal-types is the presence or absence of a tipping point. See saws have them and stairs do not. When you are thinking about a scale, you need to ask yourself is there a point on the scale that [...]

A Question of Scale: Thoughts on Questionnaire Design

I have a love-hate relationship with the 10-point scale. Although it has considerable advantages over its much smaller cousins, the 7-point and 5-point scales, it also comes with some significant drawbacks. It seems to promise so much to the survey researcher. These advantages include: the ability to one number to summarize the result. Yes, there are [...]

We Overvalue Norms… in Market Research and in Life

As a society we value norms — how is something compared with the “normal”. School starts it off but throughout our lives we seem to find ways to comparing ourselves to some normal. Even online we have developed measures of how we are doing relative to some standard (see klout). When we reduce ourselves to [...]

What is your incentive?

I received four survey requests today and one glaring thing stood out about the surveys. Some companies value my time more than others. In three of the cases, there was no incentive to go online and complete the survey. Nothing. A presumption that I value the brand enough to help out was the message. My [...]