by Richard Jenkins | Mar 25, 2011 | Industry News and Trends, Public Opinion, Survey methodology
The dropping of the writ signals the start of the election campaign but it also starts an exam period for pollsters. The major exam question is known: how close did you get to the election outcome? But there are minor questions, which are as important, and...
by Richard Jenkins | Mar 4, 2011 | Survey methodology
Imagine, you are in front of an audience presenting findings from the most recent of a series of polls. The number at the end of the series is lower than the previous point in the series. What do you say? The temptation to offer a compelling story to explain the last...
by Richard Jenkins | Feb 18, 2011 | Public Opinion, Survey methodology
Sometimes conducting market research is like walking to the store to pick up a few things. The survey (the bag you have to carry home) is better if you fill it to an optimal level but, unfortunately, once in the store you are motivated (by not wanting to come back) to...
by Richard Jenkins | Dec 24, 2010 | Industry News and Trends, Public Opinion, Survey methodology
If you are interested in the evolution of language then Google’s new little tool is a great way to see how the frequency of a word has changed over time. Using the archive of digitized books, it is now possible to see how often we used certain words (at least in the...
by Richard Jenkins | Aug 4, 2010 | Consumer and brand behaviour, Survey methodology
A picture is worth a lot of words and it can really help us explore the decisions people make. This is the main lesson from a recent online ethnography study conducted around food and nutrition. With plenty of quantitative data, the online approach was adopted to not...
by Richard Jenkins | May 19, 2010 | Industry News and Trends, Survey methodology
There is a natural temptation to glaze into the future and make predictions. Many of these regarding the telephone survey are not positive. “Eighty per cent of Canadians are online. The telephone polling industry will be largely dead and gone in five years. The...
