Class,
I realized the Ice-cream case much better serves our quest to understand about questionnaire design than the HRES case did, by the time I came to sections C and D. For the benefit of sections A and B, shall summarize the take-aways from the discussion in section D.
1. Open both the HRES case and the Ice cream survey (ICS) document. STudy the layout of the questionnaires. The ICS has psychographics and demographics placed last.
2. Look at Q1 in the ICS. "How can we ask anything on a past 6 month timeframe", you ask? Well, its a Yes/No question, so its ok. Answers would be fairly reliable and not noisy. Its calls like these I want you to make. Besides, Q1 serves as a gateway to skip 'No' answerers directly to psychographics.
3. Look at Q3 in ICS. It is an attempt to find the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT criterion. A direct, structured question that also has a open ended space given.
4. Look at Q4. A paired comparison that leads to a ranking. Why not go for ranking directly? Well, perhaps because ranking is cognitively taxing on respondents. The ICS designers figured its easy and more robust/reliable to get the info through a series of questions this way even though this way is longer. The same logic applies in Q11-14 ICS.
5. Open endeds are having full and free play. Sample Q9, 10, 15, 16 in ICS.
6. Look at Q17. See the way certain words are emphasized in the question. See how some answer categories lead to skips to other questions.
7. Look at Q22. A transparent attempt to see what else particular consumers buy to later on try to bundle together items perhaps, or do cross-selling.
8. Look at the psychographics questions in Q23. The construct seems to be the consumers' own "self-personality perception" kind of thing. Its important to recognize this is self-image data. A consumer exercising once in 3 days could think of himself/herself as a 'regular exerciser' whereas one exercising once every 2 days may not.
The point to obtaining self-image data is to tailor ad messages to target particular target profiles, perhaps.
9. Look through the demographic section. Why is info on kids under 18 asked for separately? Etc.
Now Look at the HRES questionnaire. The question types there will likely map onto the limited set of question and answer types that your survey software package allows you to do.
Shall stop here.
Hope the discussion summary helped.
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Dear Professor,
ReplyDeleteIt is great that you are giving out very simple, yet insightful assignments.
It would have been best if you had asked the quiz questions and the end term questions from the portions you teach in class.
Since this is a crash course MBA, people find it extremely difficult to go through the text book and study for the exams.
The time that we spend in class, we expect to learn something which we can use in practice as well as exams.
I hope you understand the time pressure we are in.
Thanking you,
Best Regards,
Krishna Kumar K
Hi Krishna Kumar,
ReplyDeleteAm not sure if you got the memo.
I sent out an email this morning specifically asking janta to NOT sweat the quizzes.
The quizzes are *not* designed to trap unsuspecting folk with arcane details. They're common-sense based, for the most part.
Anyway, I guess only the quiz itself on Monday will serve to convince you that I am not out to bury your happiness.
However, overlooking the textbook altogether is just not right. Smart-read through. Scan the important topics and headers. What does it take, 15 minutes per chapter with a good highliter to help you? Is that too much to ask for from a course that has hardly 3 cases in all, that too under-emphasized, no assignments at all and 6-strong group for a well-defined project?
I can understand time pressure etc if the only time you opened the textbook was just before a quiz/exam. But, like I said, a good highliter and some regular reading (like, lets say 30 minutes prior to each class) is quite, quite enough to sail through worry-free. Here, it is more a case of workload mgmt and work ethic building through regular reading rather than loading things up at the 11th hour.
I was a grad student myself a few months ago, trust me I can relate.
Regards,
Sudhir
Thanks for the reply.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Krishna Kumar K
Hi Prof,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply.
The objective of the quiz to read a number of chapters looked daunting,
since in most cases to get through the exams your presence in class and learning the class slides were enough.
Now that the requirement is to glance(smart read) through the text book, I assume it will be much easier.
Regards
Krishna Kumar K