Traditional descriptors Multi-item measures Preference measurement 1 SURVEYS Traditional descriptors Multi-item measures Preference measurement Master’s seminar 17.9.2014, Merja Halme

Planning of survey in brief Needs careful planning What are the research questions? You need to formulate the questions basing on some theoretical framework Pay attention to reliability and validity Pay attention to the verbal formulation – test the questionnaire Pay attention to scales Example of a sum variable

Questionnaire objectives Translate the info needed into questions Must make the respondent involved and finish the interview Minimize the response error

Questionnaire must base on previous research Do not design a questionnaire before checking what has been written on the topic, defining your theoretical framework, how you can utilize previous surveys And get acquainted with questionnaire techniques

Important points in questionnaire planning 1/2 What is being studied and why What is the information needed What is the inverviewing method Content of individual questions Question structure

Important points in questionnaire planning 2/2 Question wording How to order the questions Form and layout Eliminate problems by pilot-testing How to overcome inability and unwillingness to answer

Measurement and scaling PRIMARY SCALES OF MEASUREMENT Nominal Ordinal Interval Ratio Example questionnaire

Example questionnaire What kind of analyses? SCALE? How many years have you already studied for your current degree?  this is my second year this is my third year this is my fourth or later year I study for a PhD open university Example questionnaire

Example questionnaire What kind of analyses? SCALE? What is your sex?    male female Example questionnaire

Example questionnaire What kind of analyses? SCALE? We would like to know something about your working experience. Choose the alternative in the following which BEST corresponds to your situation. I worked only temporarily and in the summer I have worked around one year full time I have worked more than one year full time Example questionnaire

Example questionnaire What kind of analyses? The following is called the Likert scale. Which SCALE in our categorization? For me it is more important to aim at a job with a substantial salary than a job which is interesting. -3 Completely disagree -2 Strongly disagree -1 Somewhat disagree  0 Neither disagree nor agree  1 Somewhat agree  2 Strongly agree  3 Completely agree Example questionnaire

Why multi-item measures RELIABILITY – with a single item (question) people are less likely to give consistent answers over time. VALIDITY – more holistic picture is received if multiple questions are asked When questions are asked there is an expectation which question responses are correlated

Reliability of multi-item measures Multi-item measures can be formed e.g. using factor analysis. However, there is no reliability measure for that in SAS or SPSS (there is one in SURVO, a Finnish statistical software) Very often the question responses that load on the same factor are simply summed instead of using factor scores. The reliability measure of the sum is e.g. Cronbach alfa. Normally we wish alfa have the minimum value of 0.7.

Use already tested questions if possible Can be found in literature E.g. Handbook of Marketing Scales There exist many standardized scales, e.g. the Schwartz scale for inner values

Example of multi-item questions- PONDE When I am studying the course materials, I usually stop once in a while to think if I have actually understood the contents of the material REPEA When I am preparing for the exams, I often repeat in my mind the things to be studied again and again CONCE When studying, I often concentrate only on the content that I expect to find in the exam SCHED I often find it difficult to stick to the schedule during the course ARGUM When I am reading the course materials, I usually carefully ponder if the author’s hypotheses are correct and argumentation strong FOCUS On a course, I often skip the most difficult tasks and only focus on the easiest ones Example questionnaire

Conjoint analysis for preference measurement Can be embedded in addition to other questions in questionnaire Enables to see what respondents’ valuations are with respect to some product/service Is not restricted to marketing purposes, is employed everywhere in business The result can be individual or segment level or aggregate preferences

Choice-based conjoint analysi - example

CBC – example

You need statistics studies Pls study at least the Second course of statistics course Test theory is central – you study samples to get information about a population

Electronic questionnaire software The study used SSI Web The school has additionally Webropol Example questionnaire

Example questionnaire Statistical software Such as SAS EG or SAS Jmp or SPSS is the convenient way to do data analyses For conjoint analysis SSIWeb / CBC Example questionnaire

COURSES Models in Marketing concentrates very much on the advanced methods of surveys and marketing research - multi-item measures - conjoint analysis - segmentation

Database Marketing-Data-driven marketing Predictive modeling Logistic regression Neural networks Decision trees Validation questions Segmentation