How long should your online survey be? I’ve seen and participated in a number of discussions on this topics over the last several years. After all, you want to collect as much information as possible from your respondents but at the same time you don’t want to annoy them to the point where they quit the survey half-way through. I’ve compiled a list of four factors/questions which determine how long your online survey can reasonably be to avoid dropouts. [Read More]

Most survey software systems offer the ability to send out invitations to your potential respondents on your behalf. But how many of the e-mails actually get through, and how many end up in the spam folder? If there is one thing I’ve learned over the years, you can’t assume that your survey software provider will offer the same level of e-mail deliverability management as an e-mail vendor. [Read More]

A lot of web site recommend a “favorite” survey software program. Some of these sites are, of course, set up by the survey software company they are recommending and some of them are genuine. The reason that I don’t recommend one survey package overall of of the rest is two-fold: (1) I haven’t tried them all yet, so it wouldn’t be fair and (2) it really depends on your own personal need and financial situation. [Read More]

Not for nothing, but I’ve just developed a new web site completely unrelated to MarketResearchTech for my dentist, who wanted to get onto the web. It takes a different approach than most dental related web sites and I’d certainly welcome your feedback before it goes live. The site can be reached at the following link:

• Online Center for Dentures and Dental Implants

Bertolt Meyer has written a not-so-happy review of SPSS for the Mac 16.0. His general thesis is that it is the “most insulting piece of software” he has ever come across. He felt that it didn’t look nor act like an Macintosh application; it isn’t properly internationalized; and more than a dozen bugs. [Read More]

The founders/employees of QuestionPro maintain an interesting company blog that, in addition to describing specific features of their service, also includes a variety of more useful, general information that anyone can theoretically use with any survey service. It’s always nice to see a company that isn’t just focused on getting more clients but is also willing to add to the general knowledge available online. [Read More]

Let’s say you’re a market researcher, you have an extra $1000 lying around, and you’re looking for an easier way to improve the look, feel and efficiency of your cross-tabs. What do you buy? If you’re me, you buy the the Tables add-on for SPSS. While the text below certainly isn’t a detailed tutorial on how to use SPSS Tables, it should give you an idea of the features it makes available to help you decide whether it is worth the money. [Read More]

Have you ever gone to analyze the results of a survey in which you’ve asked for open-ended numeric information (that is, number based fields where respondents type in a number instead of choosing from a drop down list) only to find that many/some of your respondents have entered things like “10-20″ or “about 15?” You’re not alone. While many survey systems work to defeat these “alphanumeric elaborations,” Marak Fuchs published a paper last year in which he discussed the “optimal visual design of open-ended frequency questions in web surveys in order to reduce the percentage of alphanumeric elaborations and explicit extremes to frequency questions.” [Read More]

So let’s say that you need to get 500 survey responses. Which is going to be more efficient: sending a list of potential respondents a $5 gift cards along with a request to take a survey or them the promise of a $10 gift certificate if they take your survey? In 2002 Alhoscha Kaplan and Glenn White of Ernst & Young published a paper in which they did such a test and their results were a little surprising. [Read More]

David Alison, the creator of WebSurveyor survey software, last week wrote a blog entry describing his process for writing the software, launching it, and getting a partner. His account consists of two posts: first describing the startup period, followed by a second post describing the company’s growth. [Read More]

San Francisco-based MarketTools announced today that their survey software product, zTelligence has been given a variety of new features designed to make the product easier to use including several new advanced capabilities. New features include interactive video tutorials, frequently asked questions, a regular live training sessions; new authoring features designed to make survey development go faster; and new reporting features that improve flexibility. [Read More]

SPSS announced recently to its Mac-based customers that SPSS 17.0 for Mac would not be released for the PowerPC based Mac, effectively discontinuing SPSS development for the PowerPC. PowerPC Mac users presently represent about 3% of all online computer users, down from 4.2% back in 2006 when the Intel based Mac was released. This based on the following letter which was recently e-mailed to SPSS for Mac users: [Read More]

I spend a lot of time working in SPSS, and occasionally I need answers about various techniques and methods that aren’t readily available in the included documentation. Fortunately, there is a tremendous amount of free SPSS information and training materials scattered all over the web. Here are a few of my favorites. [Read More]

Qualtrics survey software from Utah-based Qualtrics is an excellent web-based survey software package that offers a fantastic array of question types, a well-designed survey development interface, good fielding/survey promotion capabilities and a powerful reporting engine. It has both panal management features and multi-users capabilities and should definitely be a contender if you’re a corporate research department or academic organization looking for a survey system.  [Read More]

QSR International announced today the release of NVivo 8, their application for analyzing “very rich” text based information (which, incidentally, includes not just text but also videos, interview recordings, documents, and media clips). According to the web site, NVivo removes many of the manual tasks associated with qualitative analysis, such as classifying, sorting, and arranging information so you have more time to explore trends, build and test theories, and “ultimately arrive at answers to questions.” [Read More]