by Jeffrey Henning | Jan 28, 2022 | Blog
The American Association of Public Opinion Researchers encourages journalists to ask how newsmaker surveys were weighted. Yet, of surveys announced in 2021 news releases, only 9% were weighted. Post-stratification weighting is typically done once a survey is complete...
by Jeffrey Henning | Dec 20, 2021 | Blog
When you analyze and report survey results, focus on the story you want to tell – don’t assume the questionnaire’s structure is the best for analysis. A properly designed questionnaire provides a narrative thread that conversationally moves the respondent from one...
by Jeffrey Henning | Nov 17, 2021 | Blog
Agreement scales, measuring how much the public agrees or disagrees with a particular idea, are one of the most popular types of questions. Unfortunately, they are also one of the least reliable types of questions. Since respondents tend to exaggerate their actual...
by Jeffrey Henning | Oct 28, 2021 | Blog
The U.S. Census Bureau has been slowly releasing data from the 2020 Census and as a result we’ve made a couple of updates to our work. First, and most easily, we’ve updated the target proportions that we weight survey data to. Second, and a bit more involved, we’ve...
by Jeffrey Henning | Jul 30, 2021 | Blog
As teams assemble questionnaires for us to review, these draft survey instruments often end up with a mishmash of scales, with different questions having scales with three, four, five, seven, eleven, or more items, as everyone incorporates their favorite scale. One of...
by Jeffrey Henning | Feb 8, 2021 | Blog
When I first started out in research, we would conduct executive interviews face-to-face. I would often both cold-call the executives in advance and then travel and do the interviews. Two of my favorite CTO interviews occurred when I was transferred to England for a...