Category: Global Research
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Today is Privacy Day!
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…
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The Mosaic of Global Research
Last week I attended the much-retooled CASRO Global Conference in Miami. The event was co-sponsored by CASRO and ARIA, the Americas Research Industry Alliance. There were around 100 attendees and the program seemed to me to be stronger than in previous years. Day 1 was interesting. The highlight for me was a presentation by Simon…
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ISO 20252 – Market, opinion and social research
In December we were audited for ISO compliance. After a week of staff interviews, project reviews and records inspections we were certified to the 20252 standard. Good for us! Now I recognize that there are more than few people in the industry who think ISO certification is some kind of retro thing that does not…
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Vendors say the darndest things
Today I got a promo piece from a global online panel vendor. On the front page they describe their offering as "high quality representative and validated panels in Brazil, Russia, India, China and now Mexico." According to Internet World Stats the Internet penetration in these countries is 38%, 43%, 7%, 32%, and 27% respectively. I…
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FTC vs. MR: A Fight to the Death?
That's at least what Quirk's email newsletter is telling me today. So what's the fuss? Something called the Best Practices Act (HR 5777), also known simply as "The Rush Bill." MRA has been sounding the alarm about this bill for some months now, and while I'm not a regular reader of Quirk's I gather that…
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Day 2 PM: CASRO International Conference
Back from lunch. CASRO conferences always seem to have great lunches! There is just one session this afternoon that the co-chair promises will get us out of future pie-in-the-sky stuff and down to the basic blocking and tackling we need to know to do well in today's world. The first presenter is Kate Southwood from…
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Day 2 AM: CASRO International Conference
Back for Day 2. Mike Cooke is kicking us off again. He is arguing that we have come to rely too much on quant and that the whole social network thing is a reinvention of the older qual methods. He sees quant as "the industrialization of research" and believes that in the process we have…
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Day 1: CASRO International Conference
I am here in Washington, DC, at the CASRO International Conference. Over the next two days I will do my best to keep up with the presenters. Mike Cooke, one of the conference chairs, is introducing the speakers and making the key point that international research is ultimately about culture. We can focus on process…
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“The world is not so flat after all.”
I saw this quote a while back and being a Tom Friedman fan it stuck with me. It was attributed to Pankaj Ghemawat, but after reading his book (Redefining Global Strategy) I'm not sure that he ever actually said it precisely that way. The central premise of his book is that the world is only…