Measuring Work Personalities

Survey research can be used to assess the attitudes and opinions of virtually any group or sub-group. Most of my work has been in the areas of consumer and B2B market research, but from time to time my focus has shifted toward surveying employees. This makes perfect sense as our employees are the...read more

Checking in on Culturally Sensitive Topics

In the course of survey research several topics have developed a reputation for being ‘sensitive’. In short this means the topical areas are perceived to be just short of off limits by the culture we live in. Examples include cultural diversity, recreational drug use, sexual activity, alcohol use,...read more

Are Using the Right Test?

Testing 1,2,3, test, test.  Consumer and B2B market researchers, well actually researchers of all stripes and disciplines, are tasked with collecting data. Said data can be from transactions, a customer satisfaction survey, brand awareness tracker, or some other data collection method (e.g. analysis...read more

20 Most Popular Posts of 2012

While we highlight the most popular posts from a given month in our newsletter, one of my favorite activities is to look back and see what posts were the most popular overall each year. Keeping with tradition, here's a look back across the 20 most popular posts of 2012!   Customer Loyalty Month: 25...read more

Rank and Rate Your Way to Customer Insight

How do we know what is important to our customers and those we wish to do business with? This is the $64,000 question. In survey research especially that which focuses on consumer or B2B marketing research this question becomes even more critical in these slow-growth economic times. This line of...read more

A is for Assessments

What is the difference between a survey and an assessment? The short answer is not much. If you think back to your days in school, the tests you took were nothing more than a scored survey. Chances are the survey design had both structured and unstructured questions with the intent of measuring your...read more

National Survey Supports Workplace Levity

The workplace can seem like such a serious place, and sometimes it should be. Research from fall 2011 that was conducted for Accountemps found that nearly 60 percent of chief financial officers thought that having a sense of humor helped an employee fit in with the companies' culture. That's right,...read more

Employee and Customer Satisfaction Correlation

Is customer satisfaction strictly a function of the product or service the consumer purchased? The short answer is no. Is it solely dependent upon the context of the purchase situation? Again, no. From the depth of customer satisfaction research we can glean that customer satisfaction is a...read more

Surveys Are Not Just for Marketing Anymore

Most of my posts have centered on marketing research or the use of survey techniques to measure marketing phenomena. However, survey research has applications well beyond the measure of customer satisfaction, brand awareness or even employee relations. The use of surveys to gather opinions, usage...read more

Questions Gone Bad

Questions, like people can go bad. When they do, the quality of your data will suffer significantly. What do I mean by questions gone bad? There are three primary areas, according to Professor Joseph Hair, et. al. in the book Essentials of Marketing Research. They are:   Unanswerable questions...read more
The Rise of the Smart Phone: Are you Leverging Mobile? 10 Tips for Mobile-Friendly Survey Creation