The Survey Geek

Category: Miscellaneous

  • Thoughts on Privacy Day

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    RegBaker
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    Thursday, January 28 is Data Privacy Day, and I am reminded that roughly 25 years ago I wrote a chapter for a book in which I tried to imagine how what was then clumsily described as computer-assisted information collection (CASIC) might evolve in the decades ahead. I had just read Nicholas Negroponte’s fascinating little book,…

  • Polling Again!

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    RegBaker
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    Once again the second biggest story coming out of a US presidential election is what one commentator described as "the absolutely massive failure of political polling." Really?  Consider this. Nate Silver, relying mostly on surveys, predicted that Joe Biden would win 30 states and that the tipping point state would be Pennsylvania. He forecasted the…

  • Finding the soul of research

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    RegBaker
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    I stole the title of this post from Simon Chadwick's editorial in the November/December issue of Research World. It reminded me that I, like many young people, began my career as something of an idealist. My first two jobs were with nonprofits and then in 1984 I joined NORC at the University of Chicago, whose tagline was…

  • ESOMAR Congress 2015: All behavior all the time

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    RegBaker
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    OK, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration and at a conference with as many concurrent sessions as we have here in Dublin there is a strong element of self-selection. Nonetheless, I’m coming away from these three days with an even stronger sense than I had coming in that the future of research is about…

  • 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…

  • Is market research for dummies?

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    RegBaker
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    A few weeks back I got myself in some trouble with some folks when I posted this piece criticizing the new book, Neuromarketing for Dummies, without having read it.  I also received some emails suggesting that the book is better than it sounds and that the authors are not pop science hacks, but people with…

  • Neuromarketing for Dummies: a book that knows its target audience

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    RegBaker
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    For a couple of weeks now I have been meaning to write a post about behavioral science, or as we seem to want to call it in MR, neuromarketing.  I admit to being a skeptic, driven in part by a belief that it is very complex stuff for MR to get its arms around and…

  • CASRO Online – Part 3

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    RegBaker
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    The afternoon session has launched and we are going to be hearing about the data privacy issues inherent in data integration. Presenters are from J.D. Power and SSI. They did a multi-mode study (online panel, web intercept, and RDD) in three counties – US, China, and India. They have done a nice little review of…

  • Let’s do better with mobile design

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    RegBaker
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    One of the ironies of mobile MR is that after almost a decade of increasing the clutter on online questionnaire screens with gadgets and images in the name of increasing engagement we now are faced with a platform were less really is more.  This point is driven home by Mobile Usability, a new book by…

  • About those 2013 predictions

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    RegBaker
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    Like it or not, the MR prediction season is upon us. For the most they will look eerily like last year and, in many cases, the year before that. A couple of weeks back on the heels of the Mayan bust I read a piece (unfortunately, I can’t remember where) describing how people respond when…