Make A Specific Decision. Often Decision Makers Make Judgments Based On "A Sample of One"
Make A Specific Decision. Often Decision Makers Make Judgments Based On "A Sample of One"
Make A Specific Decision. Often Decision Makers Make Judgments Based On "A Sample of One"
The decision to conduct market research should be based on the need for information in order to
make a specific decision. Often decision makers make judgments based on “a sample of one”,
that is, their own thinking or opinions. By taking the time to simply ask for other’s opinions,
leaders will make better decisions. The group conducting the research should be clear about:
1. The purpose of the research – What do you want to know? Avoid the urge to “cover the
waterfront”, and focus on a few specific topics.
2. Why the information is important, and how it will be used. If you don’t have the
resources or intention of acting on the research results you should not do the research.
Market research is a means to an end, not the end itself. It should lead your group to
action.
The Alumnae Relations Committee is an important resource in helping you learn about your
constituents through market research. The ARC does not conduct research for individuals or
groups, analyze research results, or plan programs based on research results.
Well-designed and conducted market research can help you make smarter decisions by providing
you with information about your constituents, including their feelings, motivations, plans,
beliefs, behavior and personal backgrounds. This information can be used in a variety of ways,
including to identify opportunities, develop programs, and improve performance.
Many times research will help steer your path by making educated guesses about the best course
of action.
Market research will not answer all of your questions and solve all of your problems. It does not
replace a group’s need for self-examination, or for strategic planning.
Top 6 tips:
1. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Make sure the information you need isn’t already available. If
you’re not sure what information may be available to you, contact the ARC at
[email protected].
2. Clearly define the primary research goal, and stay focused on it throughout.
3. Have one person who is in charge – the ultimate decision maker. No “design by
democracy”.
4. Plan your project. Dedicate resources for every stage, before beginning.
5. Don’t ask questions if you cannot act on the answers.
6. Involve the ARC. Make use of our expertise at designing usable research, as well as our
historical information, survey templates, training materials, free web survey tools, and
ability to coordinate your research.
Get organized
Decide who is responsible for your market research effort, and who is in charge. If the
responsible party is a group, select a single person who has final say.
Line up your resources before you begin. Plan who will do each of the following:
• Contact the ARC for recent research results, training tools and templates;
• Determine the purpose of your research, and how you will conduct it (email survey, etc.);
• Identify who you want to survey and get the necessary contact information;
• Write the research instrument (most often a questionnaire);
• Contact the ARC for assistance with questionnaire review and revision;
• Coordinate your research timeline through the ARC;
• Manage data collection and data entry (if necessary);
• Analyze the data and review the results;
• Share data and research results with the ARC;
• Determine a course of action.
There is a tendency when developing surveys to think “we can add just one more topic…”.
Resist this urge. The advantage to web surveys, the method most often used by the Alumnae
Association, is that they are easy and inexpensive to conduct. Better to do several focused
surveys that one massive, all-encompassing survey.
Think through how you will analyze the results before beginning the research
There’s nothing worse than doing a survey, sitting down to analyze the results, and then realizing
you asked the wrong questions, or didn’t ask some important additional questions. Furthermore,
without adequate planning, research can be misleading by providing misinformation. For
example, a seemingly logical question to ask when following up after an event is about the
quality of individual speakers or programs. However, equally or perhaps more important would
be to ask about the importance of the speaker or program to the overall event. You could have a
series of high-quality speakers or programs, but if none of them are considered important to the
overall event future attendance could suffer. By planning your analysis you may anticipate some
of these issues.
Consider confidentiality
In designing your research you need to decide whether or not the identity of respondents will be
kept confidential, and what measures you will take to ensure confidentiality.
Ensuring respondents that their individual responses will be kept confidential can encourage
them to be more candid and honest with their feedback. Respondents can still be given the
opportunity to have their specific concerns or problems addressed by including a question giving
them the option of providing their name and number if they would like to be contacted.
Ensuring confidentiality with a mail survey will include at minimum that responses be mailed
back to an independent third party. Although the Association would be happy to provide this
service, most alumnae would not consider us to be an independent third party.
Ensuring confidentiality with a phone survey, focus group or in-depth interview will involve
contracting out for data collection.
Qualitative Research is any research method that produces information based upon description
and interpretation rather than numeric analysis. Examples include focus groups, in-depth
interviews, and one-on-one interviews. Qualitative research would be useful for answering
questions such as:
• How alumnae make decisions;
• Whether our alumnae or subgroups of our alumnae have needs that are unmet by
existing products or services;
• What possible barriers exist to use of Association or Club products or services, and
reactions to specific program ideas or service offerings.
Mail survey Often less expensive than telephone Still relatively expensive and time-
or in-person contact consuming
(quantitative)
Helps avoid the bias that can be a Lower response rates
problem with phone surveys if Respondents may skip questions or
volunteers conduct the interviews provide ambiguous responses
Not an effective way to reach
disenfranchised alumnae
Qualitative Can gather nuances, follow up Expensive
research - Can be good for teasing-out why Time consuming
Focus groups, alumnae aren’t attending events, Use of volunteers (especially
In-depth aren’t engaged, etc. alumnae or students) increases
interviews likelihood of bias in data. Often
works best for an “outsider”.
Avoid bias
Data can be biased in a number of ways, including:
Web surveys
Following are steps for conducting a typical web survey:
• Contact the ARC for the website and passwords for our web survey service
• Review the training guide to help you understand how web surveys work, and how to
do yours
• Set up your survey. Enter your questionnaire.
• Proof the questionnaire, both for grammar and programming errors
• Complete several surveys before going “live”, to test the functionality
• Upload or enter your sample list
• Send the email invitations with link to the survey. In the body of the email specify a
timeframe for completing the survey
• Follow up a week later with a reminder sent to nonrespondents (the web site has the
ability to send reminders to nonrespondents only)
• Monitor number of respondents. If response to the survey is particularly low,
consider another reminder, perhaps with better incentives.
• Download data, and proceed to analysis.
• If you offered an incentive, don’t forgot to follow through and award prizes.
Mail surveys
Following are steps for conducting a typical web survey:
• Make the appropriate number of copies of your cover letter and questionnaire.
• Print mailing labels from your sample list. If you intend to send a reminder postcard,
you may want to print two batches of labels at this point.
• Insert cover letters and questionnaires into envelopes. Include a postage-prepaid
return envelop, preferably addressed to an independent third part. Label envelopes,
apply postage and mail;
• Follow up approximately 2 weeks later with a reminder postcard.
• Monitor number of respondents. If response to the survey is particularly low,
consider another reminder, perhaps with better incentives.
• Data enter results into a format that will enable you to produce some statistics on the
data. The ARC can provide recommendations how to go about this.
• If you offered an incentive, don’t forgot to follow through and award prizes.
Be sure to send the Alumnae Relations Committee a copy (preferably in electronic format) of the
questionnaire used, and the research results (including raw data, if possible).
Acting on the results is the most important step. Remember, research is not an end in itself, it is
a tool to lead you to effective action.