by david allan van nostrand | Sep 20, 2021 | Human Behavior, Items in the News, Surveys
Social scientists often get inspiration from day to day occurrences. They notice something, realize they’ve it seen before, and want to know more about it. So they do research, sometimes observational, sometimes surveys, and now and then both. Back in the 1970s, two...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 12, 2021 | How to tell good research from bad, Misinformation traps, Surveys, Using Information
Agatha Christie was a British novelist who wrote the Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot whodunits in the 1930s and 1940s. This was the golden era of British murder mysteries, with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson the most memorable of all. Fascinated...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 26, 2020 | How to tell good research from bad, Surveys
Two categories of regular readers are marketers who use research and people who conduct the research marketers use. Both groups often ask how to tell the difference between good information and bad. Because most research is privately funded for competitive purposes...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 10, 2020 | How to tell good research from bad, Items in the News, Surveys
When people do the same sort of thing while away from work as they do while at work, they are said to have taken a busman’s holiday. In London in the 1800s, horse-drawn “carriages for everyone” were called omni-buses. The driver and the conductor were called busmen....
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 3, 2020 | Items in the News, Organizational Behavior, Surveys, Using Information
Peter Cappelli, professor of Management and director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote an article in today’s Wall Street Journal that is essential reading for everyone whose organization administers annual...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 20, 2020 | Organizational Behavior, Research, Surveys, The Myopia of Experts
A guild was an association of craftsmen or merchants formed for the furtherance of their professional interests. Guilds began in ancient Rome and came to prominence in the Middle Ages. Operating at the city level, they were organized by profession, such as carpenter...
