Regular readers of this blog (if there are any) may have
noticed that I have been a social media no-show for the last couple of
months. This was not deliberate; it just
sort of happened. But now I am jumping
back in and can’t help but wonder whether this NewMR thing isn’t like an
American TV soap opera in that you can miss a whole bunch of episodes without
losing track of the story line.
In that vein, I found myself checking out the latest issue
of the online journal, Survey Practice. This journal is an AAPOR invention designed
to give an outlet mostly to practitioners without subjecting them to the rigor
of preparing a full submission to Public Opinion Quarterly or the
new AAPOR journal, Journal of
Statistics and Methodology. Which is not to say that Survey Practice is the sort of
lightweight fare we too often hear from the conference podium. It’s not.
There are literature reviews, well-designed experiments, and good solid
analyses.
The current issue is a case in point. There are at least two articles the readers
of this blog, especially if you are interesting in mobile, might find worth a
read. One
is from some folks at Nielsen and looks at surveys on tablets. They have some good data to show what many of
us probably expect, namely, that when respondents use tablets to complete
online surveys there are few ill effects, although the same cannot be said for
smartphones. The
second, by a team from Olivetree and SSI, looks at in-the-moment data
collection and finds that there can be a sort of Hawthorne effect when
respondents are asked to report each time they eat a snack. I’ve not done
justice to either of these studies so you should check them out on your
own.
I’ve long felt that innovations in research methods start
with MR, going through a sort of entrepreneurial phase in which benefits are
claimed and data presented to support the claims, but the “studies” seldom rest
on a literature or acknowledge the work of others in the field. This is followed by better-designed
experiments from researchers who may be from MR, but have an academic bent that
produces more solid research. Finally,
the academics jump in to bring the empirical and the theoretical together,
providing a scientific basis for the new methodology. We are not there yet with mobile but these
two pieces from Survey Practice are
starting to move us down that road.
Whether this description of these two studies have whetted
your appetite or not, I strongly recommend that you go to the site and register for alerts as
new issues are posted.