The question posed to the group of 5 Bloggers this month was: “The survey monkey conundrum:  the upsides, downsides and opportunities for researchers that access to self survey tools creates.” Links to my fellow bloggers Annie Pettit¹, Joel Rubinson², Josh Mendelsohn³ and Bernie Malinoff⁴ can be found below.

If a company is using DIY survey tools, I see it as an opportunity. It provides evidence that the company understands the value that market research can bring to an organization. Many market researchers, too quickly, frown upon the use of DIY Survey tools and I feel that they do so simply because it cuts them out of the loop. Survey’s have been around a lot longer than market research professionals. A simple show of hands, for example, has been around longer than the word research. No one has ever argued against a show of hands and it is likely the most frequently run survey on the planet.

Personally, I’ve never walked into a company that is running their own, homegrown, survey(s). What I have run into are a number of companies that I wish had done some kind of rudimentary survey before making a decision. Nevertheless, I do have a few concerns that I would say make hiring a research professional in the best interest of businesses large or small.

Third party impartiality being the first. One of the biggest benefits of using a research supplier is that your customers, employees, stakeholders, potentials, etc. are not talking to you. They are talking about you. Data gathered from individuals when they know the sponsor of the survey is generally very different from data gathered from individuals when they don’t know the sponsor of the survey. A good example would be an employee satisfaction study, where my experience has led me to beleive that most of the real value comes not from the basic benchmarks but from the verbatim data that can be collected. How likely do you think your employees would be to speak or write  their minds if they knew the boss was able to see it associated with their names?

The next concern is related to survey design. If you have not been trained to write surveys you will end up with poorly written questions. Even a poorly written question can provide moderately accurate data for a business decision. But it can be completely in-accurate if it contains biased questions, double-barreled questions, or questions that people won’t want to answer knowing who the information is going back to.

Last on my list of concerns is sampling methodology.  Research professionals have already convinced the biggest companies in the world that sampling methodology doesn’t matter anymore (taking a jab at online panels, I know, they’re already being battered). But that doesn’t mean that a business will be able to get it right without help.

If you are a company planning on using your own DIY survey, I say go ahead. But realize that you are likely to miss out on the expertise and impartiality that research professionals bring to the table.

The question posed to the group of 5 Bloggers this month was: “Mobile surveys – For/Against, Pros/Cons, Right Situations/Wrong Situations?” Links to my fellow bloggers Annie Pettit¹, Joel Rubinson², Josh Mendelsohn³ and Bernie Malinoff⁴ can be found below.

I feel quite strongly that mobile surveys should never attempt to replace conventional survey methodology. The range of device capabilities, penetration of mobile in the population, and the small screen sizes allow only very clear and concise questions – something that researchers aren’t very good at to begin with. The amount of time required to finish a survey and the relatively low penetration makes using a cellphone cost prohibitive for the respondent and a logistical nightmare for researchers to even attempt to compensate them for their time. However, in some countries where cellphone penetration is quite high and “practically free”, as in unlimited, the opportunity to use this method to deliver a survey is perhaps more realistic.

Take South Korea for example, in a recent survey 30 percent of the population reported accessing the internet on a mobile device. A friend of mine who once lived in South Korea, used to get a kick out of watching grandmothers in the subway send txt messages like they were teenagers. Until this kind of saturation occurs and device capabilities streamline I think researchers will do nothing but waste time, money and effort with trying to pull data. However, that does not ignore the opportunity to create a push for information.

Twitter is a great example of consumer push. Consumers update their status with 160 characters and talk about brands they use, movies that they see, and identify what they care about in regards to current events. This is where I feel the future sits at the interface between market research and mobile devices. If we can convince consumers to share their immediate perceptions with us, both positively and negatively it could open up an entire realm of data that could be used in service environments to create valuable feedback loops and with products to understand what consumers despise and are delighted by. Text analysis is a field that has been in the limelight for the last few years and will be for the on-going future as companies try to develop methods for sifting through the wealth of data that is available.

How does this relate to mobile-surveys? There are literally millions of panelists out there, if panel companies could convince their panelists to link mobile devices to their accounts and share 160 characters with them every time they liked or disliked a product or service the data stream could be amazing.