If you do survey research, should you learn SPSS? The answer is, “it depends.” Here’s a short Conversation or those of you who have been debating it. Not all survey researchers need to learn SPSS, but it is a worth consideration in specific situations discussed herein. For information on SPSS Training for survey researchers, please visit: https://training.researchrockstar.com/courses/Introduction-to-SPSS

How to do professional-quality survey research? Learn the key steps in the process of planning and conducting survey research in 11 steps. Professional survey researchers know that each of these steps, in turn, actually consists of even more granular steps—but start by learning the major steps and you will be on your way to conducting survey-based market research that will yield reliable, objective quantitative data.

For Market Researchers being offered a long-term WFH option: should you? Many Market Research & Insights professionals are being offered the work from home or hybrid work from home/in office scenarios as long term options. What's the career-oriented market researcher to do? Check out the current episode of Conversations for Research Rockstars with special guest Maya Middlemiss, for some practical tips that market researchers can use, whether they choose to work from home fulltime or...

For many people in the Market Research & Insights profession, the fun part of our projects is delivering the results in written reports. This is where we really get to shine: we get to show that our methodology has resulted in useful and usable information. The challenge? We're under pressure to deliver these reports very quickly. How do we write reports that are going to ignite insights when we may have as little as five to seven business days to do so?

Market Research & Insights professionals often need to support business clients on projects that may benefit from more than one methodology or data source. What do we need to know about the many data options available to help our clients make informed decisions? Primary and secondary research, quantitative and qualitative, predictive and prescriptive data, cross-sectional and longitudinal data, transactional data, and many more terms need to be part of our vocabulary. Let’s get started!

Online qualitative research is a hot methodology and can be very powerful. But it can also be challenging, especially for market research professionals working on ideation projects. In this conversation, Kathryn shares some tips for how to get great ideation while using online qualitative methods.

Surveys can be used to learn a lot about your target market’s attitudes, behaviors and perceptions. But only if you analyze this market research data correctly. In this real-world example, we see an-all-too common error. Don’t let this happen to you! See the case study origin here: https://bit.ly/3cgQ7KU

Market Research eLearning Options with Special Guest Stephen Griffiths. Kathryn and Stephen discuss the many options for learning about market research and advancing professional skills, including both free and paid options. Please be sure to check out Stephen’s related podcast on Digging for Insights: https://diggingforinsights.com/22-2/ And for handy links to the sites mentioned, please download our free reference sheet: https://www.​researchrockstar.​com/mrx-learning-reference-sheet/

Survey researchers often use online panel providers to fulfill their data collection needs. Need 500 working moms to take your survey on vacation planning? Need 2,000 luxury car owners to take your survey on brand perceptions? You might be getting those research participants from an online panel provider. In this conversation, Kathryn Korostoff interviewed online sample expert Andrew Moffatt of OpinionRoute about current and evolving challenges with online panel quality, including fraud, and...

Opinions on the accuracy of Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a customer loyalty measure vary widely. But like it or not, the reality is that a lot of organizations use NPS. It has become a standard key performance indicator (KPI) that many business executives embrace. So it's not going away anytime soon. The question for those of us who care about data accuracy, is how can we augment or possibly modify it to make sure that the data story told by NPS, is going to help the business improve. Many...

Are you looking to plan training for new market researchers? Or training to help a team develop professional-level survey research skills? Or qualitative research ones? How about a training plan that would advance use of new research methods? Or advance consultative skills? In this episode, Kathryn shares training plan tips and 3 examples. Conversations for Research Rockstars is produced by Research Rockstar Training & Staffing. Our 25+ eLearning classes are offered in both real-time and...

Getting your Market Research & Insights team ready for 2020? Inform your plans by considering the key strategic issues your clients face. In this Conversation, host Kathryn Korostoff shares her research on key challenges faced by marketing executives and how the Market Research & Insights function can prepare to help. The referenced infographic can be downloaded for free here: https://www.researchrockstar.com/mrx2... Conversations for Research Rockstars is produced by Research...

Question: How much do Market Research & Insights professionals need to know about data privacy? Answer: As much as most marketing-related professionals need to know these days, especially those who (like us) ever collect or store data. In this Conversation, Kathryn shares some basic definitions and links to curated resources. Including a free instant download: https://www.researchrockstar.com/priv... and webinar playback link: www.researchrockstar.com/privacy Conversations for Research...

In this episode, Kathryn covers important considerations for senior-level market research & insights professionals who are planning the next phase of their career. If we want to advance and become a consultative advisor to c-suite executives, we have to be able to address their sources of pain. And a big source of pain for c-suite executives is achieving ROI on their many and varied investments in data-driven decision making. You can help them. Here's how. Conversations for Research...

Survey researchers know: mixed-mode data collection is gaining popularity in professional market research. And for good reason: it can address known survey data quality issues. Market researchers have several data collection options--even if most of us default to online surveys. But, ideally, once a given market research survey project’s objectives and sampling goals are finalized, the next decision is to select the data collection mode that will be the best fit. Often, we assume one mode....

A key part of our success in the market research & insights profession is based on how well people comprehend and retain our results. And a huge aid to comprehension and retention is data visualization. That’s why we teach a course on data visualization and one on infographics. It’s also why I was thrilled for the opportunity to co-present with the amazing Daren Jackson from DisplayR. We held a free webinar on data visualization specifically for market research and insights professionals....

Critical thinking is a skill market research & insights professionals use to ensure our conclusions and recommendations are truly excellent. In short, critical thinking is the objective analysis and evaluation of a topic in order to develop a factually defensible judgment. While in the field of market research we don’t often refer to the precise phrase “critical thinking”, it is widely acknowledged as one of our profession’s tenets: the pursuit of objective analysis. [The specific phrase...

Market research project management has evolved a lot over the past few years, largely thanks to the many online project management tools now available. But while tech certainly helps, it's only part of the project management success equation for market research & insights professionals. The basics of project management still apply. So how to tell if your basics might need a refresh? A good place to look for evidence is by recalling your last few kickoff meetings. In the past few months,...

Planning to moderate your first online focus groups? Are you prepared for the differences between online versus in-person moderation? In this Conversation for Research Rockstars, Kathryn Korostoff describes 3 big differences moderators experience--and how to prepare for them. Related Article YouTube Twitter LinkedIn

Have you noticed the rapidly rising expectations for the design and “look” of market research reports? Unfortunately, when we are working to meet project deadlines, it’s hard to take time to evaluate our current reporting style. But how long can we delay? At what point will dated-looking deliverables negatively impact perceptions of our work? Includes info on a free PowerPoint template to get you started on updating your own market research report PowerPoint template. Related article ...

Are market research professionals widely experiencing career anxiety? The feeling of stress we may have when thinking about our 5-year career path options? Of course. And a lot is due to technology trends. In this episode, host Kathryn Korostoff discusses the realities of how and why market research career paths are changing, so that we can refresh our market research career path plans without getting distracted by short-term thinking. Related article with Pew Research and Clutch citations:...

Soft skills, especially those that relate to client management, may be the key to really thrilling market research & insights clients. And client management is often the hardest part of our work. Not sure if you agree? Well, have you (or someone on your team) ever experienced pain with any of the following: --Getting agreement on sufficiently precise research objectives --Setting and managing client expectations --Ensuring that client interests don’t conflict with objectivity ...

Need to create a market research training plan for yourself or a team? It can be overwhelming. After all, in an ideal world, you would do a needs assessment and a gap analysis before creating the plan. Alas, that may not be feasible. So how to create an effective plan, in less time? In this conversation, Kathryn Korostoff shows how to craft learning goals, gives several market research & insights examples, and also shares 2 examples of training scenarios. For more details on this topic,...

Qualitative research demand is shifting to more rigorous methods and analysis approaches. My hypothesis is that over the next year, we will see strong demand for qualitative research…but it will skew to what we might call hard-core qual. Thus, market researchers will be expected to deliver projects that meet the ever-increasing needs for scale and speed, while also being rigorous. What do you think? Are you seeing something similar...or different? In this conversation, Kathryn Korostoff...

Running a lean market research & insights team in 2019? While the reality of lean teams exists in many professions, market research & insights teams have some unique conflicts that exacerbate the challenges. That’s because some of the big trends for our profession in 2018 continue to be strong in 2019. Specifically, these three: 1. Advancing consultative skills 2. Advancing data fluency 3. Shrinking the “need-to-insight” lifecycle Running lean while achieving such notable advances...