Read my guest blog at Salient Point
I spend some of my time working as an Associate of Salient Point, a business that helps young companies to find customers for their products. At Salient Point we believe in encouraging young companies to source insight from their customers and make evidence-based decisions using primary market research.
I have recently written a guest blog for Salient Point called Will people buy my product? so please do stop by to read my article and browse the rest of the posts which I think anyone who works in a business will find interesting.
Would you like the full service?
One of the big selling points of the global market research agencies is that they can provide the full service: they can take your market research project from start to finish. People sometimes assume that because I am an independent researcher and a sole trader I can’t provide the full service.
So I’d like to explain why I can.
Read my blog post on Research Live and Huffington Post
Many thanks to those who read and shared my last blog post on What I think about the Scottish referendum question.
I just wanted to let you know that the article was syndicated by Research Live (the website for Research Magazine which is the official publication of the Market Research Society) and the Huffington Post which was very exciting indeed!
What I think about the Scottish referendum question
I have worked in public opinion polling in the past, and indeed have polled on Scottish independence before, so a few people have asked me what I think about the question that has just been released by the Scottish National Party that is soon to be used in a referendum on Scottish independence:
Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country? (Yes/No)
I’ll go out on a limb here and say it’s not the worst. And I thought it would be worst. But it’s not great either.
Research consultant? But what do you actually do?
Sometimes people ask me what I actually do. Like what happens during my working day. Consultant is such a woolly term, and research is a strange and often misunderstood term. Plus I work for myself, from home, and people are always curious about what that involves. I’ve thought for a while I might do a ‘day in the life’ blog and I’ve been waiting for a typical day. Here’s the thing, there isn’t a typical day. I work on lots of projects at the same time, things come up that demand attention, and I rarely spend more than a couple of hours on a task before skipping on to something else. But 5th January 2012 seems like as a good a day as any…
Tips for conducting surveys amongst humans
A few questionnaires that I have seen recently have comprised questions that are technically adequate but presented brusquely in an order that made no sense at all.
A person who is writing a survey would generally begin with a list of themes to be covered, flesh the themes out into rough questions, and then tighten up the rough questions ensure they make sense.
But questionnaire design should not stop here! A person who is writing a questionnaire should think about the respondent at all times and go the extra mile to make their questionnaire a pleasant experience for the respondent.
How posh would you say you are on a scale of 1 to 10?
‘Socio-economic group’ (SEG) is the proxy that the market research industry uses for social class, and in the crudest sense the industry wants to know your class because they want to know whether the rich people see things differently to the poor people. It is good for commercial organisations to know this information so that they can tell what kind of people might buy their products, and it is good for public sector organisations to know it so they can tell who is (or should be) using their services.
Questionnaires: A tool for good or evil?
At first glance ‘questionnaire’ seems a straightforward word. I’ve checked it out on dictionary.com and it means a ‘list of questions’. The thing is, there are so many reasons why you might want to ask people a list of questions. Sometimes they are nice, sometimes not so nice. Sometimes people can choose whether to answer your list of questions and sometimes they are forced upon people.
Read my article in the International Journal of Market Research
In November 2011, my article entitled welcoming people with mental health problems into mainstream research was published in the International Journal of Market Research.
Those of you who subscribe to IJMR can look out for the full publication (Volume 53, issue 6). Alternatively you can find the article reproduced on my website.
I might as well say it, I’m inclined towards being Politically Correct because it just seems like the most courteous way to be, and as a researcher I’m keen to ask ethical questions that respondents feel comfortable answering. In a previous blog post I wrote about ‘outing’ people in surveys by asking them inappropriate and thoughtless questions about their personal lives and I have also written before about whether the Census should be changed to ask about sexuality.
Well quite by chance I came across some information about a question asked in ye olde census which made me laugh and shudder at its sheer awfulness.
In the 1871 Census people were asked whether anyone in their household was:
