The Survey Geek

Category: Political Polling

  • The real lessons from US electoral polling

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    RegBaker
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    There has been a lot of buzz in MR circles about US electoral polling and especially the summary of accuracy of the polls produced by Nate Silver. As I wrote in this blog at the time Nate's piece appeared it's only natural for researchers to zero in on data collection methodology and that's pretty much…

  • The US election and the #NewMR

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    RegBaker
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    One of the most interesting side stories of the US election (at least for a survey geek) is the inconsistency in the polls. In part that's due to there being so many of them and with that proliferation has come what we might call some thinning out of polling expertise. But when a venerable polling…

  • Final thoughts on MRMW

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    RegBaker
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    In the final session of last’s week MRMW Conference chair Lenny Murphy asked me to share my three takeaways from the conference.  Here is more or less what I told him. First, if you are in the data collection business find a new business.  It’s clear that the sheer amount of data available is going…

  • Tracking at the speed of light –or thereabouts

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    RegBaker
    in ,

    I have this Epson projector and the bulb is getting flakey.  So yesterday I went online to order a new one.  I looked around to get a good price and visited a site by a company that seems to specialize in such bulbs: Pureland Supply.  But I ended up buying direct from Epson. Today I…

  • What skills does a market researcher need?

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    RegBaker
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    My inaugural post on this blog was on August 28, 2005.  I started the blog as a way to share information inside my company.  In those days posts were almost always true to the tagline and focused on surveys.  But times change and today the MR industry is nowhere near as focused on surveys as…

  • Mail survey renaissance?

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    RegBaker
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    In today's technology-driven MR industry it feels beyond retro to even mention mail surveys. Yet in the broader research industry and specifically the sector that deals with social policy research mail surveys are experiencing a major resurgence. The problems of coverage and nonresponse in telephone surveys that have driven MR online are driving social policy…

  • The maybe not-so-great privacy debate

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    RegBaker
    in

    Yesterday I listened into "The Great Privacy Debate." I won't summarize it here, that having already been done by Jeffrey Henning and Lenny Murphy with Lenny, as we might expect, being  somewhat more argumentative than the less impassioned Jeffrey. However, I will say that in terms of substance I didn't feel the debate went much…

  • The difference between market research and marketing

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    RegBaker
    in

    Earlier today I posted my reactions to a marketing piece from Communispace promoting the benefits of mobile in MROCs. Communispace reports that in their research "connected consumers demonstrate a strong appetite for contact from brands." The folks at Communispace are really good at marketing and I honestly admire that about them, but when they say…

  • CASRO Online Conference: Day 2

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    RegBaker
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    Day 2 launched with Jeff Miller from Burke (and conference co-chair) giving us a nice summary of the previous day. Then we moved into two presentations looking at differences in sample composition from traditional online panels versus those constructed through online intercepts. This is a really important issue given the current trend among panel companies…

  • CASRO Online Conference: Day 1

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    RegBaker
    in ,

    I’m at the CASRO Online Conference: Issues in Panel Management and Online Data Collection. The Twitter hashtag is #casro if you like to follow the blow-by-blow. The conference opened with a keynote by Jacqueline Anderson from Forrester. She said all of the things you would want a keynoter to say to open a conference like…