The Survey Geek

Author: RegBaker

  • Tough review from Facebook users

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    RegBaker
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    One hears a lot these days about social networks as potential sample sources. One version of the argument says we need them because they can deliver a demographic that is hard to come by in surveys, even with other online methods. Another says we can increase respondent engagement either by replicating the social network setting…

  • It works!

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    RegBaker
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    I was hoping this story describing the use of Twitter to track public sentiment on important public policy issues and predict election results would die a quiet death. It seemed to have done just that until Robert Bain dug it back up in this month's issue of Research. A close reading of the study shows…

  • Hoisted on their own petard

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    RegBaker
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    The current issue of Inside Research is out and it includes the mid-year update on online spending. Despite the headline that characterizes the growth as "soft" the numbers show the MR companies reporting to IR (and mine is one) estimating that their 2010 revenues from online will be around $2.2 billion, a 12 percent increase…

  • Social media research absent the hype

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    RegBaker
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     I just sat through an ESOMAR webinar on user-generated content by Niels Schillewaert and Annelies Verhaeghe from Insites.  Nicely done.  It was such a relief to be spared the usual hype about the social media revolution and attendant trashing of traditional research.  They did a great job of showing how what they like to call…

  • Summer fun

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    RegBaker
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    Ray Pointer has initiated a fun little discussion in the NewMR group on Linkedin. The topic is, "Cautionary tales for market researchers" and invites examples of failures of MR to help new researchers "develop a fully rounded awareness" of what we do.  The classic (no pun intended) example for most of us is the New…

  • Some worthwhile advice on questionnaire design

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    RegBaker
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    I’ve been carrying two journals around in my backpack for what seems like forever, hoping that I could find the time on an airplane or some other dead time to write something meaningful about two different articles on questionnaire design. But I’ve given up and now I am just going to refer you to them.…

  • MROCs to the rescue!

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    RegBaker
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    A colleague of mine likes to say that real difference between the new MR and the old MR is that the new MR is a lot better at marketing. I thought of that when I saw this item from Research-Live describing the latest marketing push from Communispace. Now I have nothing against these folks or…

  • Staying connected to reality

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    RegBaker
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    I spent the better part of the last three days sitting in a room with representatives from research associations in 10 countries going through the ISO 20252 section by section if not word by word.  We had two overarching goals: (1) to make the standard independent of any specific data collection technology and (2) to…

  • Guest Post: Social Media Conference Part 2

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    RegBaker
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    Part 2 of my thoughts from the recent IIR Social Media/Communities conference, focused on how communities are being used by the corporate research function in place of, or in addition to, “traditional” methods. As an aside, I used quotation marks above because the notion of “traditional” vs. “next generation” research was a commonplace at the…

  • Guest Post: Social Media Conference

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    RegBaker
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    Reg has generously lent me his way-more-than-140-characters pulpit to share some observations from the recent IIR Social Media/Communities conference in Boston (#SocialC20). This was a merger of 2 prior conferences, one a social media platform user group and one an MR conference. About 80% of participants came from marketing or PR organizations, so the discussion…