About Surveys

Online surveys are no doubt the best way to do surveys. I was doing a survey for a project in my marketing class.  I proof read it and then I had some of my team mates proof read it.  It all looked good when we sent it out to our panel, but the next day I got an email from one of our respondents who Notified me that there were a couple of spelling errors (really embarrassing ones) in our survey.  Now in a paper survey there would have been no hope.  Reprinting and redistributing 50 or so surveys that had not yet been taken wouldn’t have been possible.  But because it was an online survey we were able to correct the errors in a less than a minute, and no one who hadn’t already seen the survey ever knew the difference. 

 Later that same year in my Economics class we were doing another survey to determine a demand curve.  About mid survey I was looking at the data, as it was being collected in real time, (which by its self is reason enough to use online surveys), when I noticed that one of our questions was not the correct question type to get us the data we needed.  The question was collecting what peoples preferences where but respondents were not ranking their preferences as we needed.  No problem I simply changed the question mid stream and we moved onward with survey, this time getting the data that we needed. 

This is the big benefit of online surveys.  You can see the results in real time and you can fix any errors in real time.  Online surveys are just so much more flexible and resilient than are paper surveys. 

Branch Logic works to navigate a survey respondent to a specific block or group of questions based on how they answered previous questions in the survey, or on certain data specific to that person (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity, department, class, major, etc.) For example: If a survey respondent indicates that he or she is a Psychology major, a block or group of questions may be created using Branch Logic will contain questions that are specific and applicable to Psych majors. Each person who indicates they are majoring in Psychology will navigated to this branch. Those who indicate a different major, will be taken to another branch created specifically for them.

Joy. Peace. Unadulterated Happiness, these are words that researchers often use to describe their mood when they are about to launch a project. Months of hard work and planning has come to a few simple days, and yet often one runs into bumps and problems. This happened to me the other week, when the night before the survey was to be launched, I remember I hadn't randomized any of the scenarios, participants were supposed to see. Stricken with panic, I quickly logged on to our online survey software, and luckily, found that the program could randomize it for me. No messing with latin squares or other annoying, vexing randomizing procedures. With a couple clicks of the mouse I was able to save myself from professional calamity.

The best part about my online software was I didn't even know which participants got which scenario until the results poured in. It made for a wonderful double blind experiment.  I'm now convinced that online survey software is the best way to randomize variables in a survey.

Max-Diff is a method of scaling in which respondents are asked to identify the most important attribute and least important attribute for a set of attributes.  It counts down significantly on the amount number of questions that need are asked in comparison to the Paired Comparisons technique.  It is based on a measure of customer choice and trade-off, instead of typical rating scale responses.  It can be used to generate importance or preference scores for multiple items such as brands, concepts, or attributes.

Basically, it works like this:

A respondent is shown a set of attributes;

      A  B  C  D

And are asked to identify the most important attribute and the least important attribute (They say A is most importand and D is least important).  From this one question we know five of the six paired comparisons:

         A>B, A>C, A>D, B>D, C>D.

The analysis of Max-Diff can be done using a number of different algorithms and from these we can estimate utility functions.  Probably the most commonly used algorithm to analyze Max-Diff is using a Hierarchal Bayesian procdure.  Hierarchal Bayes is beneficial because it allows for borrowing across the data.

 Qualtrics surveys is developing this functionality.

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.

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.

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.