About Surveys

Multivariate data analysis is the analysis of multiple variables at the same time. This type of analysis is used to find how a set of variables explain one or more other variables. For example, sets of variables may explain one overall variable (brand loyalty) or may differentiate between key market segments. Similarly, a set of brand attributes may be used to map relationships to the key brands competing in the marketplace, thereby showing the strengths and weaknesses of each brand.

Some typical applications of multivariate data analysis are:

• Quality optimization (food, beverages, consumer products, insurance).
• Optimization of brand attributes.
• Multi-item Scale Development.
• Optimization of scale measures and methods.
• Classification of respondent and market segments.
• Development of new advertising and promotional materials.

While conducting survey research, most academic and private sector organizations will adhere to the code of ethics and practices established by the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). This code calls for honesty, respect, and integrity in dealing with respondents, clients, and the public.

In this code of ethics, respondents should be given the content, sponsorship, and purpose of the survey so that they may make an informed judgment about whether they wish to participate. Any assurances, such as confidentiality or anonymity, must also be kept by the researcher.

Additionally, researchers are called to disclose fully to those who sponsor surveys the limitations and shortcomings of the survey and to avoid use of methods that deliberately introduce bias into the results. A survey report should include information on who sponsored it, who conducted it, exact wording and sequencing of questions, description of the population and how a sample was selected, sample sizes and sampling tolerance, and the method place and dates of data collection.

This information is seldom available in published research reports or media summaries, but should be obtainable with a phone call or letter to the sponsor of the survey. Today, online survey software has made this process of gathering the ethical information extremely easy. With a good survey software program, one can provide the relevant information and adhere to the code of ethics and practices with ease.

Qualtrics provides great data analysis.  Its survey software is constantly updating in real time, so results of a survey are constantly being reanalyzed and updated.  Some examples of the data analysis done by this survey software are: basic descriptive statistics, cross tabulations (chi-squared, etc.), graphic displays, and more.  I like it because it is much less work than calculating it out by hand, and it doesn't need to be exported to another program to do the initial data analysis, though it may be exported for more in depth analysis.

For most companies and businesses, obtaining feedback from customers and clients is essential.  It provides them with a glimpse into what they are doing right, what they are doing wrong, as well as ways in which operations and relationships could be improved.  But obtaining and organizing this feedback in a way it can easily be sorted and delivered to the right people within the company can often be challenging. 

Qualtrics, an online-survey company has the ability to tackle this challenge.  They have easy to create surveys and a lot of functionality.  You can make a survey that begins with asking the customer what topic best relates their subject of feedback.  And then you can provide them with space to jot down their feedback.  The neat thing about Qualtrics is that you can have the feedback sent to specific people based upon what topic was selected.  They call it the "trigger" option, because a selection triggers the email.  Lets say you make cellphones and you want feedback about the "cellphones breaking" sent to one group of your employees, and "troubleshooting" issues sent to another group.  When they select the "troubleshooting" topic, then that feedback will be automatically emailed to eveyone who has been pre-selected to be on that list.  It is really easy to set this all up and is great for organizing customer satisfaction feedback so that important feedback doesn't get lost.

Recently I was trying to figure out a way to do Least Square Regression without having to use matrices.  I looked for quite awhile online for some ideas on how I could do this.  Using Matrices to tackle regression problems become a problem themselves because the matrix computations required to determine regression take a ton of computer power and often bog down systems.  It is just too much for the computer to do quickly. So a way around this is by using summations.

With Least Squares Regression we are trying to determine our intercept and our coefficients of x.  You do have to be familiar with summation notation to understand this.  What we are basically doing in this approach is trying to minimize the difference between are dependent variable, y, and our function of x, f(x).  The summation notation for this is:

∑[y-f(x)]^2=minimum

Because our f(x) is essentially f(x)=y=a+bx, so then we can have a summation of:

∏=∑[y-(a+bx)]^2=minimum

In a Psychology of Gender class, my group did a study on gender preferences in relation to desirable characteristics of the other gender. Qualtrics online survey software allowed us to create gender subgroups and analyze how males and females answered each question differently. The subgroups allowed us to find out which characteristics are more desirable for each gender. Graphs and tables are easily created for each subgroup with Qualtrics online survey software.

With W-2's, 1099-T's, and 1040s we come to truly appreciate our beloved tax bureaucracy, the IRS. Tis the season for paying taxes. With the passage of April 15th, I once again am grateful for little tools that help me prepare, the barely legible tax forms. I personally use H&R Block for my taxes, but my brother uses Turbotax, both cost about the same. Yet, this tax season I was truly inspired by an accounting companies ingenuity. They used Qualtrics, to import the tax forms and sent the forms to their employees. Brilliance!

I actually was able to help them import one of their forms regarding research and development, it was about 10 pages long and only took me about an hour to import streamlining the whole process. I imagine that the hour I spent uploading this form saved their accountants a lot of time. Corporate taxes are much more complex than personal taxes, hence the need for a good CFO, but I was amazed at how Qualtrics was able to integrate and organize their data. I've been thinking about this myself and I might just  steal this idea for my personal taxes next year.

I am a college student who has needed to perform surveys for research. I found that online surveys work most effectively. The data is collected for you automatically. All you need to do is create the survey and analyze the results. Regular paper surveys are a pain because you have to go through each survey and manually extract all the data. The only problem I came across using online surveys was having people actually respond to the survey. But, I do know that some online survey software companies, like Qualtrics, can put you in touch with panel companies which will help you get as many respondents as you need. This works well for businesses doing market research or schools doing field research. For example if you wanted to do a survey about doctors, the panel company would set up a panel of 100 doctors (or however many you needed) and they would all take your survey.

Determining what customers want and determining the trade-offs they are willing to make can be very useful information for a company to have.   Conjoint Analysis is a statistical technique that allows you to quantitatively assess the relative importance of individual components of a product or a marketing strategy.  It magnifies the joint effects of mulitiple product characteristics.  It can predict the customer switch rate from one product to another.  It can predict the reaction to new strategies and products.  It can predict the customer response to alternative pricing strategies.  It is a great tool that aids in decision making. 

Conjoint analysis starts off with a survey of the customer base you are targeting.  Qualtrics.com has conjoint functionality with a template that really makes easy the process of putting a conjoint survey together.  It is under their "advanced elements" option.  An example of a basic scenario in which this technique would be helpful follows:

A marketing manager of a athletic shorts company wants to get a better understanding of the trade-offs their customers are willing to make and their happiness level associated with those trade-offs.

They determine four factors they feel are important with different attributes within each factor:

Short Color: Red, Blue, Black

Price: $15, $20, $25

Inseam Length: 14 inches, 18 inches, 20 inches 

Pockets: Pockets, No Pockets

The survey will ask questions about the importance of these different factors to the individual customers.  The questions will ask how much more important one factor is than another. 

The actual analysis of the a conjoint study is difficult, but valuable.  It provides beneficial intelligence about the best interactions of product factors and want customers want.   There are programs that can aid in the analysis (SPSS, SAS, Qualtrics, etc.) and this is probably the best route to take. 

Dichotomous Format - A test or survey item that offers two alternatives for each item (e.g. True/False).

Polytomous (Polychotomous) Format - A test or survey item with three or more alternative responses for each item (i.e. Multiple choice).

Likert Format - Item that would indicate the degree of agreement with a particular attitudinal question or statement (e.g. strongly disagree, disagree, neither disagree nor agree, agree, strongly agree).

Category Format - A rating scale format that uses a range of numbers or points (i.e. 1-10).

Checklists - A list of adjectives that delineate the characteristics of the person or topic.