The Survey Geek

Author: RegBaker

  • Failure to replicate

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    RegBaker
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    The not-so-big new last week was the NYT article with the intriguing title, “Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed, Study Says,” a rehash of this article in Science. In case you missed it, the bottom line is that findings from roughly two-thirds of studies in peer-reviewed journals could not be replicated. This should…

  • Online samples: Paying attention to the important stuff

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    RegBaker
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    Those of you who routinely prowl the MRX blogosphere may have noticed a recent uptick in worries about speeders, fraudulent respondents, and other undesirables in online surveys. None of this is new. These concerns first surfaced over a decade ago, and I admit to being among those working the worry beads. An awful lot has…

  • Representivity ain’t what it used to be

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    RegBaker
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    I am on my way back from ESOMAR APAC in Singapore where I gave a short presentation with the title, “What you need to know about online panels.” Part of the presentation was about the evolution of a set of widely-accepted QA practices that while standard in the US and much of Europe are sometimes…

  • Mixed mode, but with a twist

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    RegBaker
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    I was in London last week at the MRS Annual Conference where there were a number of interesting sessions, including an excellent workshop on social media measurement by Ray Poynter from NewMR that I believe Ray is turning into a webinar. One of my favorites among the other presentations was one by Neil Griffiths from…

  • Online Sampling Again

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    RegBaker
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    Last week two posts on the GreenBook Blog, one by Scott Weinberg and a response by Ron Sellers, bemoaned the quality of online research and especially its sampling. And who can blame them? All of us, including me, have been known to go a little Howard Beale on this issue from time to time. We…

  • Today is Privacy Day!

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    RegBaker
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    Almost 20 years ago some colleagues and I edited a book with the inviting title, Computer Assisted Information Collection. Experts on a wide variety of computer-assisted methods contributed the chapters and I was tasked with writing the last chapter, a look into the future of technology and survey research. At the risk of tooting my own…

  • Aligning practice and principle in the NewMR

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    RegBaker
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    Regular readers of this blog (assuming they exist) may have noticed that since retiring almost three years ago posts here are few and far between. That does not mean lack of interest. Much to my surprise I have discovered that my fascination with market, opinion, and social research remains strong, even when I no longer…

  • “Just trust us.”

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    RegBaker
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    While skimming an article in the current issue of Businessweek on the Weather Channel’s emerging use of big data for things other than predicting the weather, I saw the graphic at the right and immediately thought of the causality versus correlation debate.  They have gotten hold of tons of data from Walmart and P&G, which…

  • AAPOR gets it wrong

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    RegBaker
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    Unless you’ve been on vacation the last couple of weeks chances are that you have heard that The New York Times CBS News have begun using the YouGov online panel in the models they use to forecast US election results, part of a change in their longstanding policy of using only data from probability-based samples…

  • Innovate or ?

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    RegBaker
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    I spent most of this week in Atlanta at the Insight Innovation Exchange. All I can say is, “Whew!” There must have been 100 presentations over the three days, most a merciful 20 minutes with a few meatier 40 minute sessions mixed in. Coming on the heels of MRMW in Chicago just two weeks ago…