The Survey Geek

Author: RegBaker

  • HSRM Day 4 AM

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    The final session of this conference offered five papers under the general heading of "Potential for Innovations with New Technology and Communication Tools." (Here I disclose that I presented in this session with help from two colleagues.) The papers ran the gamut from better tools for interviewers to do what they always have done to…

  • Zero defects: An admirable but elusive goal

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    RegBaker
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    Several years ago I was asked to write a chapter for a book called Methods for Testing and Evaluating Survey Questionnaires. So a couple of colleagues and I wrote something on testing online questionnaires. It led me to scratch the surface of the contemporary software testing literature where I learned that the industry had more…

  • Getting to the bottom of the respondent engagement problem

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    I've been working along with some colleagues on the lit review section of a paper for the ESOMAR Congress. The topic is "gamification" as the next experiment designed to increase respondent engagement in online surveys. As anyone who has done their homework knows the issue of survey respondent engagement did not arise with the growth…

  • New challenges to online panel data quality

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    Among the many criticisms we hear of online panels is the charge that we have no idea whether these respondents are who they say they are and that the incentive-driven nature of panels encourages people to pretend they are someone they are not. A number of companies have introduced products to clean up online samples…

  • HSRM Day 3 PM

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    I’ve just returned from the AAPOR Annual Conference where I was reminded by one of the HSRM Conference organizers that I never finished my HSRM posts.  Shame on me.  So picking up where I left off, the afternoon session consisted of six papers on the general topic, “Building the Health Data Sets of Tomorrow.”  The…

  • HSRM Day 3 AM

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    This morning's topic is "Optimizing Health Survey Strategies." Let's be clear about one thing: rumors of the death of probability sampling are greatly exaggerated. The NHIS uses a high quality sampling frame and routinely get 95%. The NSFG gets 79%. There is a lot of money and time spent to get these kinds of outcomes…

  • HSRM Day 2 Postscript

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    RegBaker
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    The discussion after the PM session at HSRM took an interesting turn when a number of people questioned whether we were increasing respondent burden to unsustainable levels. In the MR side of the industry we clearly have gone over the top with many questionnaires, but mostly those questionnaires offend with their repetition and downright tediousness.…

  • HSRM – Day 2 PM

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    The afternoon session is about monitoring Healthcare Reform. But first I must say how impressive the discussion was at the end of the morning session. At this conference the discussion part of a session is taken very seriously. It is a genuine dialogue among people who know their stuff. None of the usual eye rolling…

  • HSRM – Day 2 AM

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    There is a bit of a cloud over the conference this morning. A number of the papers were written by and to be presented by government people who could not travel yesterday because of the potential government shutdown. So people from the contractor side are taking up the slack and delivering the government papers. The…

  • Health Survey Research Methods Conference

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    I am at the 10th Health Survey Research Methods Conference in Peachtree, GA, which is just outside Atlanta. This is a very unique conference that has been held every two or three years since 1975. It is a gathering of government health survey researchers and people from the companies that do most of their data…