By Andrew Grenville, Chief Research Officer - Vision Critical The question you ask can shape or even determine the answer you get. Questions need to be crafted with a great deal of care. Let me tell you a story about two priests to illustrate this point. Two older Irish priests were down at the pub having a pint and a smoke. And as they chatted and lit up another cigarette, they discussed smoking and praying. One said to ... | Read More

By: Andrew Grenville - Chief Research Officer It drives me bonkers when researchers, trying to understand people’s attitudes, use a scale that allows people to say they “neither agree nor disagree”. This renders the statement nigh upon useless. The problem is a variation on the conundrum of comparing apples and oranges. When we ask someone how much they agree or disagree with a statement, we are asking them where, on a continuum, they stand. The continuum can be sliced ... | Read More

BY: JANE TANG, VP ANALYTICAL INTELLIGENCE – VISION CRITICAL Part of the Series “Take Me Back To The Stats: Where Data and Insight Collide” You’ve probably seen polls that are based on a “random sample of the Canadian population”. Or, to be more accurate, you’ve probably seen polls that SAY they are based on a “random sample of the Canadian population”. And while that expression is commonly used, it’s not exactly true. It simply isn’t possible to get a ... | Read More

By: Jane Tang, VP Analytical Intelligence - Vision Critical Part of the Series “Take Me Back To The Stats: Where Data and Insight Collide” Statistical significance tests are a bit like eating fish. Most of the time, you get a wonderful meal (assuming you like seafood!). But if you eat a lot of fish and are not choosy about where it comes from, you might end up with a memorable bellyache. The “data fishing” exercise you commonly see in market research is a ... | Read More

By: Andrew Grenville, Chief Research Officer - Vision Critical Part Of Series: Questions & Answers: On the Art and Science of Survey Research Emotions play a powerful role in consumer choice. Researchers and marketers are coming to understand this more and more and, as a result, many people are trying to measure feelings. A lot of market researchers are using images of facial expressions to capture emotions. Some do it with cute little cartoon characters, others with pictures ... | Read More

By: Andrew Grenville, Chief Research Officer, Vision Critical Part Of Series: "Questions & Answers: On the Art and Science of Survey Research" Why? That’s the question we researchers want the answer to all the time. But when we ask it, we never get the truth we’re looking for. What we get is a response that is driven by the social context in which we ask it. In other words, people give us the answers they think we are ... | Read More