The Survey Geek

It's all relative

Yesterday, for the first time in many months, I visited my local audio store to check out the latest equipment and to see how they've been weathering the recession.  When I asked how business had been the owner told me that last year people were saying, "Flat is the new up." He says that this year they're saying, "Open is the new up."

This same sort of relativism seemed to be at work in this press release last week from Clarabridge, the text mining people, and Harris Interactive.  It compares results from an online Harris Poll on US healthcare reform with online chatter during the same period.   In its survey Harris found that support for the current healthcare legislation had fallen to 40 percent by mid-November.  The Clarabridge analysis of social media pegged support at 65 percent during the same period.   What exactly am I supposed to do with that? The best I could do is conclude that social media has the huge bias that we all fear it has.  That it's basically a qualitative method to be valued for its depth and richness rather than its accuracy.  That even though we can count things it's not quant research in the traditional sense and we should be really careful with any conclusions we might draw.

But there is a larger issue here as well and it's the matter of fact presentation of an online survey as "survey research" and the gold standard against which the accuracy of social media should be measured.  They might have been better served by a comparison to a Gallup Poll  done by telephone during the same period showing support for healthcare reform never dipping below 48 percent. (And, yes, Gallup called landlines and cell phones.) At least it's closer to their 65 percent.  It makes you wonder whether we can find the truth any more or, worse yet, if anyone cares.

In Decembers past I often have left the audio store with some sleek new piece of hi-fi gear.  This year I left with a single record.  Yes, a record, not a CD.  I own plenty of both but I'm mostly a vinyl guy, which probably explains a lot.

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.