The Survey Geek

Author: RegBaker

  • How to write a mobile research pitch piece

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    RegBaker
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    I've not always been kind to mobile in some of my posts. It's not that I have a problem with it or don't expect it to become an interesting and important part of how we do research at some still undefined time in our future. It's the hype that gets me. That hype mostly follows…

  • ESOMAR 3D

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    RegBaker
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    This is an unabashed plug for an upcoming conference: ESOMAR's 3D Digital Dimensions 2011 to be held October 26-28 in Miami. (Disclosure: I am chair of the Programme Committee.) This will be the latest in a series of thematic ESOMAR conferences that more than any other has charted the evolution of online research from panels…

  • Two cheers for mobile: MRMW 2011

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    RegBaker
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    I spent two days this week in suburban Atlanta at Market Research in the Mobile World 2011 (MRMW 2011), a conference as its name suggests (almost) totally focused on mobile research. It had an imposing agenda with a whopping 29 presentations all in the same room over two days. The presentations were grouped into four…

  • Is there a pony in there somewhere?

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    RegBaker
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    Last Thursday I was a panelist in an online discussion about mobile. Jeffrey Henning gave a nice balanced summary here. Leonard Murphy, who organized the event, took a more fanciful and argumentative approach in his report on the Green Book Blog. For those of you who missed it and have an hour to burn there…

  • Gamification

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    RegBaker
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    I spent much of the last couple of weeks heads down with colleagues finishing up a paper on survey gamification for the ESOMAR Congress. We wanted to test whether the claims made for gamification are born out empirically. Betty Adamou has done a pretty good job of succinctly summarizing the arguments and methods here but…

  • Waiting for mobile

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    RegBaker
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    Just about a year ago I wrote a post I called "Waiting for mobile" that somehow never made it online. The genesis of that post was a graphic I'd seen from allaboutsymbinan.com that was built from comScore data. The data seem to say that while smartphone use was rising rapidly, most of their owners were…

  • Here we go again

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    RegBaker
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    That was my first reaction when I read a press release from Gongos Research that starts off by saying, "a new study proves that smartphone-based survey data is statistically comparable to online survey data." (My emphasis added.) I would have been a lot more comfortable with this if instead of "proves" they had said "shows"…

  • A Literary Digest moment

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    RegBaker
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    Last week McKinsey released results from a study of the impact of US healthcare reform (The Affordable Care Act) on employer-provided health insurance. The report estimated that 78 million workers were likely to lose their employer provided health insurance once the law kicks in fully in 2014. This estimate is significantly at odds with other…

  • Cell phone data quality

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    RegBaker
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    My first taste of a methodological imbroglio was 25 years ago and involved the introduction of CAPI (computer-assisted personal interviewing). There was widespread speculation that interviewers using laptops for in-person interviewing might lead to unforeseen impacts on data quality. Empirical research taught us that we needn't worry and so CAPI became the standard. More recently…

  • Can we really do two things at once?

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    RegBaker
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    Like most research companies mine now routinely includes cell phones in our telephone samples. Best practice requires that before we interview someone on a cell phone we determine if it's safe to do the interview. If, for example, the respondent is driving a car we don't do the interview. Yesterday someone asked me if it…