Being cheap costs money: The hidden costs of not using a panel provider

Earlier this year, I had the unintended fortune of comparing three different methods of obtaining sample: client lists, web banners, and panel providers.  As you might imagine, the panel provider proved to be the most efficient means to fill the online study.  While the other methods showed glimmers of promise, they were simply unable to provide a significant volume of respondents.  Disclaimer: I am not being sponsored by any panel company to write this post (but would be happy to consider such!)

How low will it go? The third time isn’t charming

In what is becoming a depressing quarterly ritual, I have updated two prior posts on the status of unemployment in the US.  Unfortunately, my initial prediction in April that we wouldn’t see double-digit unemployment has been proven wrong by today’s release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: it’s 10.2%.

PSA: Prevent “Next” Button Abuse

Jeffery Henning at Vovici recently conducted a test on whether online surveys with a single question per page had a higher dropout rate than a survey with multiple, related questions per page.  While the sample size was admittedly small, the results speak for themselves: Grouping similar questions on the same page reduced the dropout rate.

Although the test was only on question grouping, I believe this is an indicator of the overall importance of user-friendly design and survey navigation.  Remember, please be kind to respondents…and the Next button.

PhotoSketch

According to the creators, PhotoSketch is “a system that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture  is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement with the sketch and text labels; these are found by searching the Internet.”

Love sports, love math?

If so, I recommend reading Mathletics: How Gamblers, Managers, and Sports Enthusiasts Use Mathematics in Baseball, Basketball, and Football.  While Money Ball was a great story, it lacked the math and ideas that someone could implement.  Mathletics is the converse.

The author, Wayne Winston, was one of my favorite professors and has a knack for looking at new ways to quantify things and is happy to share those ideas.

More from the ARF Foundations of Quality study

My thanks to the ARF for continuing to share the results of their Foundations of Quality initiative with the research community. The latest comes from Joel Rubinson’s blog, and compares results from online, RDD and mail surveys to national benchmarks.

Statistical Software Resources

Here’s a site I can really relate to: The Impoverished Social Scientist’s Guide to Free Statistical Software and Resources.  It’s like being a kid in a candy store.

Segmentation Algorithms

I wanted to title this post Segmentation Methods, but decided to use a “big” word to prevent misinterpretations.  There are many ways to segment a market/customer base – by demographics, needs, etc.  If given the choice, I prefer to segment by customer needs and then look for demographic differences among the segments.

Just as there are different inputs for a segmentation, there are different algorithms.  And that was the intended the topic of this post, a comparison of segmentation employing K-Means Clustering, Two-Step Clustering and Latent Class Analysis.

How low will it go – Revisited

Four months ago I published a post on unemployment rates during this and previous recessions.  I figured it was time to update those charts and was waiting until this morning when the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced July’s numbers.  The numbers were a pleasant surprise in that the July unemployment rate dropped by a tenth.  Follow the link for the updated charts and tables.

ARF insights on panel quality

If you’ve ever had to address a client’s concerns about the quality of online panels, then stop reading this post and click over to the Advertising Research Foundation and Joel Rubinson’s blog.