The Survey Geek

Truth in texting

I admit that I've never been much of a fan of SMS surveys. Too many limitations to do anything meaningful. Once Nathan Eagle started showing up at conferences and talking about his experiences with SMS in developing countries, especially in Africa, I could see a niche. That is, if you can call accessing two billion people a niche.

Last week someone sent me this little news item about a study by two academics, Fred Conrad and Michael Schober (I've collaborated with these guys on some unrelated work), that suggests one can collect some pretty good quality data via text. While you can't collect a lot they found that respondents were generally honest (no sign of social desirability bias on sensitive questions), showed little evidence of satisficing and exhibited few signs of heaping, that is, giving round numbers (typically numbers divisible by 5) when asked to report specific counts such as the number of movies they saw in the last month.

Given the kind of research that dominates MR I still believe that mobile ultimately depends on the continued growth in smartphone use. But whether via smartphone or good old-fashioned feature phone, feedback by text message may not be dead yet.

AAPOR catches the wave

I’ve been going to the AAPOR Annual Conference for more years than I can count.  The last several have been like trips back in time.  While web survey design was often discussed the the new and rapidly-evolving methodologies that occupy MR conferences were seldom acknowledged in any meaningful way.  Or, if acknowledged hardly welcomed.   But this conference was dramatically different.  There were five sessions on mobile, another four on various aspects of social media and three sessions on non-probability sampling including a plenary noticeably absent the fireworks that have accompanied similar discussions in years past.  There was even a session on gamification!

I think this is a really important development.  As new methods move front and center with this group of researchers we can expect our understanding of them to deepen and the methods themselves to become more robust.  Kudos to conference chair Dan Merkle for a job well done.

The Mosaic of Global Research

Last week I attended the much-retooled CASRO Global Conference in Miami. The event was co-sponsored by CASRO and ARIA, the Americas Research Industry Alliance. There were around 100 attendees and the program seemed to me to be stronger than in previous years.

Day 1 was interesting. The highlight for me was a presentation by Simon Chadwick on what I would call the business side of MR. He described the evolution of international MR that has culminated in an industry structure in which a very small group of large global companies dominate. Using what Simon called "an imperial strategy" these firms have planted their flags in countries all over the world and, on the face of it at least, are positioned to conduct research anywhere on behalf of the multinationals that comprise the heart of the industry's client base. The driving force behind this strategy has been the emergence of a global/consuming middle class, first in North America, Europe and Japan, then the BRICs and now emerging market countries worldwide. Within 10 years we can expect that 90% of the global middle class will be outside of North America and Europe. The question Simon posed was whether the imperial strategy will work in that future.

He suspects not. Two key developments to be reckoned with are (1) the growth of multinationals outside of the US and Europe and (2) the emergence of new data collection modalities with the global infrastructure to support them. The former is especially important as the percentage of MR work being contracted out of the US and Europe declines while increasing in countries where multinationals like Tata and Lenovo are headquartered. In this context, regional MR firms may be able to compete successfully against the big global companies. And the continued increase of online, mobile, social media, etc. means that having feet on the ground is not as big an advantage as it once was. With the right set of partners it's now possible to conduct research pretty much anywhere in the world.

As this unfolds Simon sees two kinds of firms that are especially endangered: small companies and those with whose primary business is serving their domestic market.

I probably have not done justice to Simon's argument in this short post, but as he laid it out in its entirely it was quite compelling. And also refreshing. Market researchers are a paranoid bunch. When we gather at conferences we spend way too much time worrying about players from other industries (management consulting, business intelligence, social networks, etc.) coming into our space and eating our lunch. The prophets of doom are always with us, whether presenting at conferences or crying out in the blogosphere. Like the Flintstones character Schleprock we seem to carry around our own little rain clouds wherever we go. What I really liked about Simon's presentation is that it gave me a break from all of that. It was about what we must do as businesses, not the do or die methodology choices we absolutely must make before lunch. It's a different perspective on the industry and while it frankly is a little scary it is at least prescriptive and actionable. A welcome relief.