The Survey Geek

Author: RegBaker

  • ESOMAR Online Conference

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    Excellent blogging of the event can be found here.

  • Have we reached a turning point in online research?

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      I am starting to believe that 2009 may be a watershed year in the evolution of online research. At least three important developments stand out. First, after several years of widespread concern about panel data quality the industry appears to be arriving at something approaching a consensus about what constitutes a "good" panel, the…

  • Sometimes it’s the little things

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    One of the things that has always irked be about online is the poor graphical design of many of the surveys that find their way to my inbox. At one point we established a folder on our corporate network where people could dump screenshots of the especially bizarre. We called the folder, “Hall of Shame.”…

  • Might Web researchers be developing a conscience?

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    RegBaker
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    Amongst all the talk in Montreux about corporate social responsibility was some interesting discussion about how Web survey researchers also might develop a little social responsibility of their own. First, there is Research-Voice.com. This is the brainchild of Kees de Jong (now CEO at SSI) who for the last couple of years has been championing…

  • ESOMAR Congress

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    I've just returned from the ESOMAR Congress in Montreux.  This is  a great event to meet up with colleagues and partners, current and hoped for, from around the world.  But in all honesty, the content is not always as great as the networking opportunities.  I'm not going to comment on the overall content this year…

  • This is worth your time

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    One of the links over on the right is to an online journal called Survey Practice.  Rather than me trying to describe their editorial focus and policy it's probably best to check it out firsthand here.  I point all of this out to you because the current issue is focused on nonprobability sampling and while…

  • Disclaimers

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    RegBaker
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    Our knowledge manager sent me this article on Twitter the other day.  She 's always pushing Twitter at me because she knows I don't get it and views that as some sort of character flaw.  This article tries to answer the question on everyone's lips: why don't more teens use Twitter?  The search for the…

  • To tell you the truth . . .

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    Those of us who are old enough to remember the early days of online may also recall that one troubling finding was the disparity between customer sat ratings across modes, that is, online vs. phone. Online always seemed to be lower. There were multiple hypotheses advanced but once the empirical work got going it seemed…

  • Some marching orders from Neils

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    RegBaker
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    Regular readers of this blog (if there are any) know that I have some genuine enthusiasm for Research 2.0 or Connected Research or whatever we call MR in the age of Web 2.0 and social media.  Yet I still find it largely undefined, mostly a collection of buzzwords still awaiting a real definition as a…

  • When will we learn?

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    I am delighted to see Mirta Galesic's and Michael Bosnjak's 2003 study of the impact of questionnaire length on response quality in Web surveys finally make it into print, in this case the summer issue of POQ. We all believe down to our toes that long surveys are bad, but I have been disappointed on…