The Survey Geek

Social media vid

I've gotten a few queries asking about the video we showed at the beginning of the ESOMAR Online Conference last week in  Chicago.  You can see it here.

Some marching orders from Neils

Regular readers of this blog (if there are any) know that I have some genuine enthusiasm for Research 2.0 or Connected Research or whatever we call MR in the age of Web 2.0 and social media.  Yet I still find it largely undefined, mostly a collection of buzzwords still awaiting a real definition as a research method.  Niels Schillewaert at Insites Consulting in Belgium is doing some of the best thinking of anyone about what this future looks like.    I've recommended his stuff before and I follow that up here with the suggestion that you have a look at this video of one of his recent presentations.  I could nitpick with a couple of things he says, but not with the central thrust and certainly not with what seem to be his two central points: (1) we need to think long and hard about what all of this means and (2) begin defining the the skillsets and the tools we need to do research in a fundamentally-changed world.  A tall order for someone who has been doing what I do as long as I've been doing it.

A public service annoucement

A colleague has sent me a link to a survey and I feel obligated to pass it on.  No need to worry, we are all supposed to pass it on.  It's one of those.  What we used to call snowball sampling.

To be honest, I don't care for the survey much but I'm passing it on for two reasons.  First, my colleague thinks it likely will produce "a moderately interesting set of data" on social media use in the research industry.  Second, it's the best example that I've seen in a long time of a survey that puts form before function .  I found the experience to be a little like texting while driving.  It reminded me a little of that driving test in the New York Times a few weeks back.

Here is the link.  Enjoy it.  Pass it on if you like.

Are social networks overrated?

There is an interesting report this morning on a study by Harris Interactive that looks at the influence of various sources of information on consumer purchase decisions.  Before I get to the most surprising finding I should note that while the press release does not say the study was done online I am assuming that it was (after all, it is Harris Interactive) and leave it to readers to judge how that might impact the study findings.  The result of greatest interest: just eight percent of respondents said that they turned either to social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn or to customer community sites for information about products prior to purchase.  The most common way (36 percent) that consumers reported finding information about a product prior to purchase was to consult the company's Web site.  Twenty two percent reported getting information from a sales person and 21 percent from "someone not affiliated with the company." 

But the news may not be as disconcerting at it sounds for Research 2.0 enthusiasts.  About one in five respondents said they consulted independent sites with product reviews (such as TripAdvisor or Amazon) and 11 percent said they looked at online message boards.  So while social networks per se don't look all that popular, user generated online content is an important source of information.  It's also worth noting that social networks are used the most by the 18-24 group where 16 percent report consulting social media sources prior to product purchases.  No surprise there.

On the one hand, as both a Facebook and LinkedIn user I don't find this all that surprising.  But as a researcher who listens to the industry buzz about where research is headed I am very surprised indeed.  It seems that things don't change as fast we think or perhaps wish they do.  And as with online research in general, it's always important to try to distinguish the hype from the reality. 

Sometimes I am slow to catch on

I've been on vacation and literally the last thing I did before I left was to read a piece in IJMR by Martin Oxley and Brendan Light titled, "Research 2.0: engage or give up the ghost?"  As I mulled it over on the way to the airport it dawned on me that this mixed bag of issues, ideas, and problems we lump under the general heading of "online" has four distinct themes to it.

The first of these themes is related to how we adopt traditional question and answer formats to the Web.  Mostly this is about how we transition from interviewer administration to self administration and from aural to visual.  This is the space where the academic-based survey methodologists have done a lot of good work with some worthwhile contributions from MR research on research.  This is also the turf of the Flash evangelists who I cynically view as more about promoting a business model than doing good solid methodological research.

The second theme is really a major paradigm shift and is all about changing how we extract (if that's the proper word) the information we need from people.  Rather than asking respondents (again, if that's the right word) questions that require them to translate their reactions, thoughts, opinions, etc. into words it tires to provide images and symbols as the main answering devices.  That's the essence of what Oxley and Light describe.  These methods have generally been more widely promoted and used in Europe than elsewhere.

The third theme is focused on the people whom we interview (again, if that's the right word).  This is where we get into all of those arguments about representivity, professional respondents, satisifcing, etc.  There probably has been more work in this area than the others, especially in the US, but how much light is being shed remains an open question.  This has been mostly about access panels but increasingly now is about social networks. Rightly or wrongly, this has been the turf where the debate about the quality of online research has been joined.

Finally, there is the "listening" theme.  This is all about harvesting the ongoing conversation of the Web to help clients understand how their products and brands are being perceived.  Too often it's not just about listening, but also about intervening which creates an interesting dilemma for researchers around where research ends and marketing begins.

Maybe this has been obvious to other people all along, but it's been a revelation of sorts to me.  I always find it easier to understand a problem when you can compartmentalize it and look at its pieces one at a time.