Qualitative Research

Does Confidentiality Matter?

The issue of confidentiality in research design has been discussed for many years in the research community and is generally regarded as a hallmark of any study.  Researchers have (and do) approach the design process with the underlying belief that people will not respond or not respond honestly to our research requests unless they are convinced that all responses will be held in confidence.  And, because minimizing response error while maximizing the truthfulness Read Full Text

The Role of Controls

Back in 1997 I wrote an article for the American Marketing Association concerning control issues in research design.  The AMA titled the article “Control is elusive in research design” and it is as pertinent today as it was all those years ago.

The article talks about the important role control plays in the college research lab – how students learn that the integrity of research findings rests in large measure on the level of controls built into the designs – and contrasts this to the Read Full Text

Transparency in Marketing Research

Two efforts dealing with transparency caught my eye recently – one from AAPOR (the American Association for Public Opinion Research) and the other from Don Bruzzone (of Bruzzone Research) and Jack Bookbinder (at Kaiser Permanente).  In just the last few weeks AAPOR announced its Transparency Initiative program which is intended to “place the value of openness at the center of our profession, and to encourage and make it as easy as possible for survey firms to be transparent about their research methods.”  Peter Miller, president of AAPOR, Read Full Text