Attention Researchers! We All Know What The Problems Are. The Real Question Is, What Can We Do About It?
All of us have probably looked at a situation and can’t detect the problem. Whether it is a DVD or any piece of technology that just doesn’t work for some reason or your car just won’t start. You have NO idea what the problem is so you have no idea what the solution might be.
I must say that doesn’t appear to be the issue in the market research industry. All of us know what the issues are. In fact we have known what the issues are for years — many years. I recently sent out a quick email and asked people what they thought were the top three or four issues with data collection. There were a number of common themes:
- Length of questionnaire
- Boring, repetitive, poorly written surveys
- Declining cooperation rates
- Great variation in quality across online sample providers
As a follow up, I presented at the CASRO Data Collection conference in November and you just read my presentation. That’s it. Short and sweet. I started listing the current issues in the research industry and launched into what I hope was a step toward a very productive brain storming session.
Isn’t it about time to do something about it?
Isn’t it about time that we all work together to make things better to solve some of these issues?
- What do you think the research associations should do?
- What can clients do?
- What can your company do?
THIS IS VERY CRITICAL TO THE LONG TERM SUSTAINABILITY OF THIS GREAT INDUSTRY.
If there is only one posting you comment on the next year — please make it this one.
I really look forward to your comments and suggestions.
December 5th, 2007 at 9:56 am
education, education, education.
I find that a lot of the problems are the lack of knowledge.
As for respondent cooperation, I believe there is a one factor that hasn’t been addressed in regards to this situation. I believe we need to better educate respondents about their role in market research. I believe that the more education we give to the respondent about how their opinions and participation affect the marketplace; the more likely it will be to have active and honest participation. I think every data collection company should be held responsible for this education; and that the MRA could help standardize the way we educate respondents by outlining key criteria that each respondent should be aware of before participating in a survey.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Merrill,
Your speech and entertaining was an asset to CASRO and MRA.
BUT
When will something be done about respondent cooperation.CMOR, CASRO, MRA, AMA all have had or are having conferences about the same thing. It has become a real money making proposition for conferences.
The real answer is that we need some real brains out there to figure it out, stop talking about it.
I am not an analyst or a statistician. I do believe that in this new era of data collection someone out there can come up with answers .
In the last 60 years of data collection methodologies and analytics have met and found a way to work.
Where is the person that will figure this out?
Jim Steber
President/CEO
December 5th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Stephanie - you are right about education. I do think that the responsibility goes beyond data collection firms. In reality, anyone touching research should be concerned about declining response rates and respondent cooperation rates. This is an industry wide concern and needs to be addressed industry wide. There are proposed advertising and marketing campaigns that require significant funding to make them become reality. Unfortunately no one has figured out an effective way to pool resources together to fund these programs. The cost to do it effectively is 100’s of Thousands of dollars, but we need to start somewhere. In a previous post (or email blast), Merrill offered a challenge to other firms to match a contribution M/A/R/C was willing to make. I don’t know the response from that, but I’m guessing there was very little. This is everyone else’s problem until it becomes a huge problem for our entire industry. It is not just a data collectors issue… This is an industry issue. How can we make a difference? In an article coming out this month in Quirks, I offer some suggestions on how to address many of these concerns. Education of respondents and industry professionals is a big focus of this. In addition, we need to address the surveys which are fatiguing and boring our respondents to death. If we all work together, we can find long term solutions instead of using band aids to cover up the issues.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:59 am
I agree with Stephenie’s comments about education. Further, I think it’s imperative that the MRA make more progress with the marketing of our profession so that it is legitimized in the minds of the general public AND the end users.
Also, for all of us that are providers of research (or data collectors), it is vital that WE ask the right questions, adhere to proper and scientifically valid methodologies, etc. While it may be difficult to “turn away revenue”, we are adding to the problem when we agree to be any part of research that isn’t conducted in a sound manner. We all have a responsibility to know the right questions to ask and shouldn’t partner with companies who do not adhere to professional standards/best practices, regardless of the methodology (qual/quant).
In addition to educating the general public (regarding respondent cooperation rates) I find more and more often that there’s a great need to educate the clients/end users. Even when we look at the MRA; there is a small percentage of members who are actively involved and who are aware enough to help in the education process. How can we better reach the majority of our membership and get them involved/up-to-speed?
In my ever humble opinion, the only way to increase respondent cooperation is through greater efforts with marketing and public relations by all of the major marketing research associations.
December 5th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Hello All:
Thought I’d lend the CMOR perspective to the threat that poor respondent cooperation poses to data quality. We were organized by the research associations in 1992, in part, to tackle this specific issue.
CMOR leadership believes that solving issues of respondent cooperation is best done through multiple efforts, and it seems you’ve already brought several of them up.
First, it is important to communicate the value of research to the public, as well as ensure that their rights are maintained when they are participants in research. To that end, we’ve developed and launched the Your Opinion Counts® program (www.youropinioncounts.org). This involves a public relations component- for research. Of course, the standard setting associations (MRA, AAPOR, etc.) need to maintain, enforce, and expand tough standards of ethics which will help to complete the equation.
The conferences that we put on are meant to disseminate information about respondent cooperation. It’s true, the issue has been around for a while. But, through industry efforts- we have a much greater understanding of the problem. For example, as a profession we’re moving toward a fuller understanding of situations where poor respondent cooperation threatens research vs. times when it may not affect data quality negatively. This is a relatively new area of research-on-research, and it’s important that this (and other) information gets shared throughout the profession. We make the powerpoints from the conferences available after the workshops.
Finally, we’re always interested in volunteers- if anyone has a specific interest in respondent cooperation. We’re looking into developing a new set of best practices from some of the research we’ve done recently- email pglaser@cmor.org.
December 5th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I really appreciate the five of you answering so quickly.
What I really would like and begging for is progress in one issue in this great industry.
It doesn’t 100% matter to me which one we start with AS LONG AS WE START NOW!
Please join in and make a difference - I know together we can!
Thanks.
Merrill
December 5th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Reading the above posts, it seems that many are in agreement with “we need to better educate respondents about their role in market research.”
I think we need to turn that statement on its head and have respondents educate the profession as to what they expect and desire when participating in our studies.
We should be designing and developing methods to collect data that excite and inspire respondents to participate. Just like any great producer of consumer goods (Apple, NIKE, Toyota), this profession needs to continually find that “WOW!” factor that is going to keep our respondents engaged and forthcoming with their insights and opinions, without sacrificing integrity or quality. Particpating in a marketing research study should be more like a trip to an amusement park rather than having your mother give you a haircut.
Again, as I have stated before (see posting of May 23rd ), respondent cooperation is just a mere symptom of the greater problem this profession faces - marginalization on marketing research in the C-Suite
December 5th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
There are generally two ways to fix a problem: rely on a government/industry body, or let the market speak. When it comes to respondent cooperation, my point of view is that we need to come up with industry standards to allow the market to speak.
In a way, the market already speaks: respondents vote with their feet! While I am all for education and have nothing against raising funds for a good cause, the truth is that most surveys produced by our industry are not worth fighting for. If I had to educate someone, it would be survey designers, not respondents.
Thankfully, consumers today are too smart to just believe what they hear in commercials. They think surveys are a waste of time and none of us can blame them for that. Our surveys are generally such a poor experience that without incentives there would probably be no research industry at all. So, what we need is a way to incentivize ourselves to come up with better surveys, to not ask what we already know.
The technology is already there to make more exciting surveys, to mine data and store existing data. You don’t even need technology to write better shorter surveys. If we wanted to, we could come up with better surveys. But why would we? All of this has a cost, so what is the benefit of making all these additional investments when competition doesn’t and clients look at cost first?
In other words, what I think is missing is an accepted measure of survey quality and an incentive for researchers to improve their surveys.
An idea which comes back once in a while would be to let respondents rate surveys and show the rating to other prospective respondents. User-generated reviews work for books and restaurants, why not surveys? Not everyone is a fan a user-generated data, so another idea would be to let an organization rate all surveys going live. With either approach, long/boring surveys would be so poorly rated that few respondent would take them. Over time, the market dynamics would force researchers to improve their survey design, new design specialists would emerge to help researchers optimize their survey designs, poor technologies would be forced out of the market, some sample companies would differentiate themselves by only providing sample to high-quality surveys, etc.
The problem with that market-driven approach is that everyone needs to play the rules for it to succeed. If not, clients who (knowingly or not) abuse respondents with poorly-designed surveys will just move on to find another vendor. Here is a sad fact: few researchers have the guts to turn down business. So, we all accept to collect data, or recruit sample for poorly designed questionnaires. At the end of the day, since respondents can’t tell the difference between a good and a bad survey, they increasingly assume that all surveys are bad… And the only way to find respondents is to rely heavily on incentives, with all the problems it comes up with (professional survey takers, fraud, satisficing, etc).
That might be the role that the industry bodies could play: ensure that ratings are “fair and balanced”, help agencies share their ratings.
Thoughts anyone? As researchers and survey designers, would any of you be willing to let respondents rate your work?
December 6th, 2007 at 5:59 am
I think issues 1 and 2 are where researchers need to start.
First, after roughly 10 to 15 minutes of questions, you can assume the incremental insights from any more questions are probably negated by the desire for consumers to say or check anything just to get to the end of the survey.
Second, brand researchers and their internal clients need to know that a lack of focus in questioning will probably result in a poor questionnaire and a lack of focus in results. When you start tacking on “Just One More Things”, the muddled nature of the questionnaire will probably do more harm than good.
Finally, Ed’s comment is a very good one. Like Seth Godin’s concept of “permission marketing”, maybe there is a future for “permission consumer research”.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
I agree with Paul -
Education is important but look at the four points in the list - three of the points deal specifically with research companies and the research industry. And what we do with those could even be (or probably is) the main cause of the fourth point (declining cooperation rates).
I think this has been said - Are the cooperation rates going down because of our long, boring, repetitive, poorly written surveys? Probably but who knows? But there is at least something we can do about that on an individual basis. That is the starting point. Sure we could try and educate the general public that doing quality research means that they need to be asked questions for 30-45 minutes and in the end they will benefit. But I think that is a losing battle. We are the ones who need to adapt - make research appealing to the general public. Have shorter surveys - maybe people will do more if they are short. More interactive and fun surveys - maybe participation will increase if they are enjoying the conversation. Industry wide guidelines for quality (no matter the method is used for data collection), this is just imperative.
The challenge is accomplishing this industry wide. That involves a commitment from all of us.
December 7th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Hello Merril,
I am very sensitive for your point on panel quality! Your post actually made me wonder, why only now the industry starts to wonder about (online panel) quality: the elephant has been in the room all along, right? These are probably reasons why we had no hurry to talk about this before:
1. There wasn’t much of an alternative - offline research simply became too expensive to justify in many instances
2. Faced with limited budgets research managers absorbed the pressure from their boards to get more for less and pushed for online
3. It’s been against the commercial interests of the companies selling online:
a. The pre-potent factors created a commercial demand for a service at a particular price point
b. The people selling online have not necessarily been research methodologists (lots of database / panel companies)
c. The panel companies made good money by ignoring the problems with online research
d. In the absence of market pressure to deal with the issues it’s been cheaper to ignore them
e. Research companies have got in on the act as packaging up online sample has been a low cost way to compete with companies with strengths in the traditional field operations area
4. What the clients have got back seems to be OK for decision making (good face validity)
5. It seemed like market forces were delivering clients exactly what they wanted
6. All this has all come to a head relatively recently when some mayor clients have begun to stand up and question the accuracy and value of the results they were getting online (the ARF initiative).
So does this all link back to the good old price/quality quandary? We cannot have it all: it cannot be faster, cheaper and provide better quality, right? Quality has its price.
December 7th, 2007 at 11:51 am
It’s an uphill battle for certain, but one that requires an undertaking and the MRA is the place to start. Our education is among the finest offered in our profession and it’s because our members are so committed and volunteer to design and deliver such strong content.
Perhaps this is our call to action - that we come together to draft best practices for screener and questionnaire design. The rules and do’s and don’ts….the must haves and can’t stands…the “you gotta be kiddings!” along with some real suggestions for how to gather information that is actually needed in another format, perhaps viewed as less invasive to the respondent. Do we augment with a pre- or post- interview/group assignment? A lobby exercise? An online activity? How do we engage younger respondents?
To pull this off will require a collaborative effort among quant, qual, field and full service firms….moderators and end users. The Education Work Group will be happy to coordinate this effort if we can get the volunteers interested in working with us on it. Just let me know!
December 7th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
The comments so far show that we all share the 4 concerns. Regarding the decline in response rates, we seem to agree that at least to an extend, the long, non-engaging questionnaires, repetitive questionnaires are causing the decline.
So what is needed to turn the tide? The solution probably is not just adding more interesting question types, shortening the questionnaire or adding Flash to your online survey, it’s about time we start to take our relationship with panellists serious. Already on last year’s Panel ESOMAR conference in Barcelona Pete Comley presented an inspiring paper about “the games we play”. In summary he showed how a lot of what we do as researchers when we interact with our online respondents is very much in a Parent to Child mode. This is in conflict with the expected Adult to Adult behaviour and the resulting crossed transaction causes what are called ‘Cold Fuzzies’ to be sent repeatedly to our respondents.
However what was more interesting about the paper was the proposed solutions to this, his paper is still accessible at the Virtual Survey website:
http://www.virtualsurveys.com/news/papers/paper_29.pdf
December 10th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Emiel,
Thanks for your comments. Sounds like a very interesting paper - I will review it.
Merrill
December 10th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Emiel,
I agree with alot of your comments. My belief is we have a tremendous amount of intelligence in this industry. These same people are very passionate and can be very solutions-oriented. The client summit that Bob Lederer had a few months ago ONLY included clients, the CASRO Data Collection conference a few weeks ago ONLY included suppliers and data collection companies. UNTIL EVERYONE IS TALKING AND IN THE SAME ROOM PROGRESS WILL NOT BE AT THE SPEED THAT THE INDUSTRY NEEDS.
I am sure that the client summit was great as was the CASRO session BUT wouldn’t it had been better if there was a task force made up of 4-5 leaders from suppliers in the room with them and wouldn’t it been fantastic if there were a client task force that went to CASRO? I say yes - more progress would be made as opposed to having barriers. I would also go as far as saying let the task force go to the events for free.
This is just one thought., I hope we can continue to hear from many more people.
Merrill
December 10th, 2007 at 7:28 am
Marisa,
Thanks for your comments. At the CASRO presentation we discussed having some best practices and actually one idea we kicked around was having 4-5 slides that we could all agree on to include in our company capability presentation to clients. the thought was that if we had one message that included best practices we could make a little progress.
Thanks for contributing.
Merrill
December 10th, 2007 at 9:51 am
This is my favorite topic. The solutions require some thinking outside the box. I have one methodological solution that I have mentioned before and for which I would like some feedback.
First, regarding education. This is a great idea, but one that is simply impractical. We can educate people all we want about the importance of research, but that is not going to make people less bored with long surveys.
It strikes me as very odd in the day of YouTube, LinkedIn, MySpace, FaceBook, and the hundreds of thousands of blogs, that professional market researchers are having trouble finding people to give their opinions. Consumers do not need incentives to be encouraged to tell us what they think. They are more than willing. We just have to find ways to meet them half way.
I designed an online customer feedback system that has gotten a 70% response rate. In designing the approach to sampling I went back to R.A. Fisher’s 1920s papers on sampling theory. The first question I asked was, “Why do we sample the way we do?” The answer, from the ’20s, was that we sample because we cannot practically ask everyone to tell us what they think. Imagine the phone costs or the labor of personally interviewing every customer.
But, online you can ask everyone what they think. The limiting factor is their willingness to take the time to respond. We have found that if you ask only a few questions, say, three at a time, most people have no problem taking a few seconds to reply. But, you have to place the survey somewhere that people are already interacting. You can’t just put up a blind link or send an email invitation. They have to actually see the questions.
We developed a process we call ASK3 that takes a full length survey and rotates through the questions three at a time. The process is similar in some ways to Conjoint, but actually much simpler. Questions are grouped into three classes and combined so that key crosstabs and correlations can be conducted.
When we placed ASK3 onto a client online checkout page, over 70% of their customers provided 3 answers without a single negative comment.
ASK3 methodology isn’t a panacea, but it is the kind of solution that we need to be thinking about. The statistical underpinnings are sound (in my opinion), even if it does appear on the surface to violate some of our traditional assumptions.
There are plenty of ideas out there. The question is whether the MR industry is ready to take a serious look at them. So far, most of what we have done is simply to take phone survey methods and put them online. That has served us for a decade, but it won’t hold up in the long run.
If anyone is interested in discussing these methods in greater detail, please let me know.
Steve at SchwartzResearch.com
December 10th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Merrill-
You asked the right questions at the CASRO Data collection conference and there was a lively, healthy and constructive exchange from the participants. I think it needed to be done and opened up some frustrations and issues that we’ve all been thinking about.
To me one of the key take-aways from that event was that the sponsors of research and the providers of it attend different conferences. It is not just that we’re talking past each other, we’re talking among ourselves as two independent groups! We can’t address the broader issues that way. My sense is that we’re pushing the issues back and forth and it will be really hard to make any substantial progess with this approach.
I would like to see the professional associations organize an event that getsboth sponsors and providers involved. Not in an adversarial or confrontational sort of way –but in a constructive way that reflects the involvement everyone needs to have in order to make a difference.
In the meantime, I made a comment at the conference I stand by. “let no challenge go unanswered”. The next time someone asks you to be involved in something that doesn’t make sense from the perspective of quality outcome…..engage them in a dialog, educate them with whatever you know about the topic that causes you to have reservations and work with them to create change…..one survey at a time. I see some of these
posts making the types of suggestions and sharing the kinds of information that can help us make a difference.
December 10th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Merrill - Enjoyed your presentation at CASRO - Very thought provoking.
I do agree that we must always strive to improve data quality, shorten our lengths, be more engaging and respondent friendly, and improve response rates. This effort is not method or mode related… it should be part of everything we do.
Many of us with ample gray hair grew up in this industry learning that all data collection methods have their place, along with their inherent limitations and biases. As I’ve said in previous industry presentations.. the principles of statistics are akin to the laws of physics, and cannot be waved away because they have become more expensive, time-consuming, or simply too hard.
The Project is the key level of evaluation, in my opinion. Every need for data exists on a continuum of cost, time, allowable variation and bias.. that springs from the business need, the nature of the decision to be made, and the acceptability of risk.
I believe, however… we have, in many cases, lost our project level focus and adopted a business-model based focus …. understandable given the tremendous investment required to build our various data collection infrastructures … along with the resulting need for an ROI. When you only have a hammer, every problem is a nail…
Frankly, this gives me doubts about industry level solutions to the “data quality problem”… because we are, afterall, a collection of different types of players … and the business-model fragmentation is exceedingly difficult to overcome. In many of the DQ discussions, I tend to hear more defensiveness than intraspection…
I think that Client education is the key, even if the news isn’t always better-cheaper-faster … and I’m encouraged of late to see more of them approach us with “a study”… rather than a phone, or web, or mail, or whatever project. While we should always strive to improve our quality… all of our tools have their limits.. and the client’s needs should be paramount in selecting the proper one(s).
December 10th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Steve is headed in the right direction. An action oriented try. Attempt to discover how respondents want things to happen. Steve’s ASK3 should be researched and broadened into a best practices that, combined with other best practices, can be presented to the industry as a whole. The true researchers can choose to make the changes to these new steps that work. Those who choose not to will find it more difficult to get answers. This means that the market of respondents are making the decisions that we need. Merrill, this is what I meant in our previous discussion. Practical, concrete decisions that can be acted on. We have seen lots of people talking for years. Now we stop talking and find answers.
December 11th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Merrill, the issue of declining Respondent Cooperation is one that has been plaguing our industry for years. And for years we have discussed, in many forums, the need for a solution which obviously we have not found yet.
In my opinion any effort that will succeed in turning it around must include all sectors of our industry. Clients, Research Companies and Data Collectors must band together.
What needs to be done ? First it’s important that we acknowledge the severity of the problem and clearly address the causes of the problem. Long and tedious questionnaires, interviewing at intrusive times and venues are just some of the causes. I believe that educating the public about the meaningfulness of Research is critical and has to be part of the process. However , this will not be accomplished on a shoe string budget. It will take major dollars and the involvement of influential people in our industry working on it..
Someone should step up and recruit members from all sectors to make a major commitment of time and dollars to address the issue. All of these forums are not getting it done. There needs to be a Champion.
I would be happy to volunteer some of my time to explore ways to move the marble a lot faster than it has been moved.
Joe
December 11th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Chris,
I echo your comments - they are right on target. The industry will clearly make much more progress working together.
Gregg,
Thanks for your nice comments and the presentation. Client education could help alot. I don’t believe it is the end all but a nice start fro sure. I would love to hear from some clients and associations. I hope they find the time to add their thoughts.
Merrill
December 12th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
I’ve been thinking about this since Merrill published the question/challenge. First of all, I think it would behoove all us researchers to stop calling them respondents, and start recognizing them as our customers. If we do that, then it will be a big step forward as we then might begin to treat them with the respect they deserve and stop treating them as a data point or a piece of property. I would be scared to death to read what respondents would say about our industry if someone did a Customer Satisfaction Survey of their feelings about us.
At 63 I have been in mall based data collection for 35 years with offices all over the country in which I have spent plenty of time rubbing elbows with shoppers we recruited into our offices. I am decidedly old school when it comes to the thought that this is a people business and since we are a service business, the way we deliver our service to the people we interact with has a lot to do with their satisfaction.
To that end, we spend a lot of money building professional looking storefronts that become our brand as shoppers pass by. The offices are large by mall office standards, well appointed and all designated reception and interviewing areas are large enough and well enough furnished to be comfortable.
All our interviewers dress professionally (a moving target in our casual world), wear name tags, and have a long list of rules for conduct in the mall and in our office before and after the interview.
We observe all client requirements regarding past participation, and other generally recognized standards for study inclusion. We make every attempt to move respondents through the interview process as quickly as we can while properly administering the questionnaire.
So, in the day-to-day world, we are doing everything we can that is within our power to put our best foot forward and represent the industry to the best of our ability. But not all of my colleagues are making the same choices.
Emiel mentioned Offline being just too expensive, but that Online has over promised or been under controlled by end users and full service research suppliers who hire these services. Whichever is correct, the pricing pressure placed upon mall based interviewing services has forced some operators to cut costs by not doing the things we believe are important-professional looking offices that are clean, professional conduct by interviewers, proper study administration. These operations undercut our industry, and I’m afraid many clients look the other way as long as these interviewing services can produce interviews at a low price and reasonably close to deadline.
MRA has never stopped talking about Quality in my 35 years. The problem is that Quality means different things to different people and I dare say, there is probably not a single MRA member who does not believe they do quality work.
We have had ongoing efforts at educating respondents since Frank Walker coined the Your Opinion Counts slogan in the late 60’s/early 70’s. I’m proud to say that my mother Pat Heakin was the first Chair of the National Marketing Research Week campaign launched in 1982 which was the first time all our major research associations/organizations came together on a common cause.
Thanks to organizations like the Burke Institute, MRII, the cooperative education courses offered by institutions like the University of Georgia, and now the MRA’s PRC Program which I’m proud to say we helped get started, there is no lack of educational opportunities for research professionals to develop their skills and careers.
And with regard to public relations, the research industry has sponsored other efforts like CMOR. So I do not believe the problem lies in education.
The problem is our commitment to Quality, and our willingness as an industry to pay for Quality, and to do the right thing by demanding facility operators to run professional facilities and stop supporting those who don’t simply because the offer huge discounts. How, pray tell, do you think they are able to affect these cost savings when other operators are not able to?
Likewise with Online. These people need to be subjected to the same level of scrutiny that we Offline providers are. Everyday, we go through past participation and critical industry screens, are validated by our clients and our respondents are filtered by Sigma. In addition to having to satisfy all requirements, clients are timing our Internet interviews and evaluating open ends to see if they believe everything is on the up and up. But my best friend, who belongs to one of the best known national Online panels tells me he is solicited to do an interview every single week.
A couple of years back, a respected Field Director from a Honomichl 50 research supplier told a MRA audience that “you cannot validate Online as it is an invasion of privacy.” As long as there is no one guarding the hen house, I’m afraid there is no hope that the abuses that are being created by the need to be ever cheaper will soon end.
What is needed is that end users and research suppliers need to reward the small and mid-size interviewing services who compete based on Quality and service, rather than price as seems to be the preferred method of the larger companies.
Finally, I do not read a single article in the MRA Alert that does not hype technology as the answer to every problem and the only hope for the future of research. Technology is only a tool. When placed in the hands of people who are not dedicated to Quality and service, we will get the same results we always have in the past and the problems we have will not be solved.
John Heakin, President
North American Insights