Project Scope feedback and Discussion

Hi all,

Received the following (excellent) feedback from a student on the project scope document. My response is included below. More queries or discussions welcome.

The project scope seems quite interesting although I feel that the scope might be just a little too wide. With a questionnaire as short as you require it to be, we might not be able to do justice to the analysis requirements. The scope document suggests that we analyze the current investments, the likely asset classes they are interested in, their perceptions about, the customers' media habits, perceptions about insurance and relevant banks, lifestyle and psychographic analysis, to name a few. I might be wrong but I feel that the analysis may lack depth if we try to cover everything mentioned here.For instance, assessment of media habits mostly calls for a whole different market research project itself.

Regards,
Romessa

My response:

Hi Romessa,

Thanks for the feedback. In fact, IMHO (in my honest/humble opinion) this comment and subsequent discussion merits a separate blogpost, perhaps.

I did consider making the survey more 'specific' - as in restricted to a handful of asset classes. Turns out that is what I expect will happen anyway, after you've deliberated upon the options available, listed them, shortlisted from among them and arrived at an actionable set based on questionnaire design constraints. This process of creating a wide list and narrowing it down to a handful of realistic options - based on secondary data perhaps, on exploratory conversations with experts in the area, on preliminary conversations with people who fit the target profile, etc - is something IMHO the class should go through in the process of questionnaire design.

15 minutes is usually good enough for upto 40 multiple choice questions of which about 10 are simple demographic information collection. Now, the other 30 questions on topic can reveal quite a bit provided the answer categories have been arrived at and fixed with care and thought.

The websurvey isn't quite administered to total strangers in this project, so typically slightly more leeway in response and completion rates can be expected, based on last year's experience.

Perhaps you could look up what folks did last year to a topic that was just as broad. I have putup links to last year's project scope document and some posts from Oct 2009 talk about questionnaire design travails. In fact, last year's survey should still be on, live. Try to take the survey and see how long it takes you!

As for media habits, yes, it can be made as intricate as necessary. IMHO, here, the point is to get some broad idea about media exposure of the most attractive segments of the target population which is better than nothing. Just a broad idea and not really very precise estimates or anything.

In any case, hang on for lecture 3 to commence and a clearer picture of survey design to emerge. I hope things will become clearer then.

Sudhir

OK, here are the posts from last year's project questionnaire design issues:

The websurvey live link from last year is here. The survey is *still* open. I would strongly urge folk to take the survey and see for themselves the time it takes, the kind of questions we came up with last time, etc.

Thoughts on the project questionnaire. This was in response to Q&A and clarifications on what the criteria were. This one is a recommended read, janta.

Some issues relating to specific questions, wording etc. This one is more to give you a flavor of the kind of issues and details that crop up going forward. This is more in the same mold.

Hope that helped.

Sudhir