Journalism 3251

This survey looked into airline satisfactions and ranked the top airlines on this basis. Right away, the article informed the reader that the survey was looking at seven factors in order to rank the top airlines.

This survey was published by Forbes and was conducted by the market reserach company, J.D. Power and Associates. The article also says that this is an annually published survey which adds to the amount in which you can trust where the data is coming from.

However, I was surprised that a large market research company would be so simple reporting their research in published article in Forbes magazine. Nowhere does it say how many people were surveyed or what the survey questions were. As a reader, it is beneficial to see satistics or numbers in research and I found none of that. Just simply the order in which the airlines fell based on rankings.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2012/06/14/survey-names-passengers-most-and-least-favorite-airlines/

This survey was done in 2009 and asked 1,400 recent supermarket shoppers about their latest supermarket expereince. The questions ranged everywhere from the types of bag that was most commonly preferred to the overall thought on the produce, meats, dairy, etc. sections.

The research was fair to make generalized assumptions because it surveyed the entire United States and included dated from specific regions (northeast, south, west, midwest). The research was very extensive and thoroughly conducted.

What I would have liked to have seen was which stores people had visited. Possible data could look at it people visited large chain grocers or small, independent grocers. The research does a good job of showing the findings, I would have just been interested to see the actual survey that was distributed to the respondents.

http://www.rsg.com/pdf/RSG%20Supermarket%20Experience%20Survey%2009.pdf

This survey was interesting to me because it analyzes brand loyalty to car brands. Brand loyalty is something that I explored in my Marketing 3040 class but the psychology behind it is something that I think we have studied in this class.

The survey captured data from over 2,000 respondents, making their theory that brand loyalty is not of everyone's concern plenty plausible in my opinion. According to the survey, over 2/3 of those surveyed that had multiple cars on their driveways report that the cars are from different makers.

This survey provided rationale to their recommendations on how to get consumers to be brand loyal to a specific automaker. The research was conducted by IBM and suggests that not only to automakers need to persuade buyers to purchase their products, but need to keep them satisfied while they use it so that they recall the brand when it comes to purchase of an additional vehicle. The survey found that people choose their cars based on friends and family's opinions so social influences are definitely at work.

http://www.freep.com/article/20121115/BUSINESS01/121115055/ibm-survey-car-buying-habits

This was a survey I found that was conducted by students of the University of Missouri. This survey was intended to understand why high school students chose not to eat school lunches.

Why I like this survey is because they use a semantic scale. As we have talked about them in class, the semantic scale is good for measuring data and can be easily distributed in a survey. The overall research of the data is very and there was even an executive summary included which from learning recently, would be good to give to someone in charge of determining school lunch plans because they are interested in results, not necessarily the methods.

What I did not like this survey was because in all, it asked 43. I know that when I take surveys that are this long, I tend to not give my honest answer because it seems too long. I would recommend going back through and cutting out some questions to make it more manageable for respondents.

http://www.nfsmi.org/documentlibraryfiles/PDF/20090910104851.pdf

I chose to analyze this survey because it was relevant how our culture is becoming increasingly social. Lately in class, we have been talking about the impacts social media has been having on research and how social media will impact research methods.

I found this survey to be quite informative and I appreciated that they gave reasoning behind their findings. 49% of single respondents owned a smartphone in comparison to 43% of married couples. 45% of marrid people owned a tablet in comparison to 36% of single people. The sample size was large enough to support the theory that smartphones are for single people and tablets are for married couples. The sample size was over 2,000 respondents.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/29/tech/mobile/smartphones-tablets-singles-couples/index.html?iref=allsearch

A study was recently done analyzing the effects of Twitter on politics. A study found that Twitter users were 68% more likely to visit a campaign donation page than non-Twitter users. This study was benefical because this past election utiliized social media much more than any other election. Most importantly, both candidates used social media to compete against eachother and deliver their messages to multiple audiences.

I found this study very intriguing and well-done. It appealed to readers because there were many graphs and the study was separated into different sections to understand how all of the research intertwined; which also made the research clear. The survey had many credible sources and it was done in a timely manner, making it more relevant and more useful.

http://advertising.twitter.com/2012/10/how-tweets-influence-political.html

This article examined shopper's attitudes on buying garments and what is in their consideration set during purchase. When this study was done, there was a recent fire in a plant where the garments were made and people were injured. But this did not effect shopper's attitudes on whether or not to purchase the garment stating that when they heard about the fire, they tried not to think about it.

I thought this article was quite interesting and it had reputable sources including Paco Underhill. Underhill studies consumer behavior and I have actually studied him in my Marketing 3040 class. The source credible is present in this study but what makes it difficult to read is the length and the fact that there are no statistics in the research study. The author does not even say how many shoppers were sampled and if it was a random sample.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/shoppers-habits-changed-garment-plant-fire-17843705

A recent survey was conducted to understand how many DVRs are in homes that also connect to cable or satellite TV services.

I found this survey very credible because it was found on ABCnews, was published by the Associated Press, and was conducted by the Leichtman's Research Group. Leichtman had an appropriate sample size of 1,300 households for this survey. The survey showed that 45% of households had a DVR device which was up 13.5% from 5 years ago.

What I appreciated about this survey was that the findings were presented quite clearly which made sense to all readers. To make the survey even more credible, they could have included that it was a random sample. The survey had interesting information at the end which said that DVRs still account for only 8% of TV watching. Because there are 45% of households that have DVRs but only 8% make up the TV watching, it would have been interesting to understand where the large number gap comes from.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/study-dvrs-now-half-us-pay-tv-homes-17846986

I recently went to Starbucks and was given a survey on my reciept. On the reciept, I was told that I would get one dollar off of my next purchase at Starbucks if I were to take this sruvey, making me motivated to complete the task because I would likely return to Starbucks. When taking the survey, I found it to be a bit longer than I anticipated. The questioned range from demographic questions, questions about the drink we ordered, how far the nearest Starbucks is, the satisfactory level of our visit, etc.

There were also areas where you could write in your own comments. As I am a student that is studying surveys, I was more inclined to write comments because I know the importance of qualitative data to a researcher. However, I think the survey was way too long and those that do not take the survey with an understanding of the benefits to the researcher may just quickly go through the survey in order to receive their dollar off.

Because bullying has become a topic so prevalant in the media, I thought looking at research behind bullying would be an interesting topic of discussion.

What was specifically interesting about this research was that it was found that bullies are not fitting the typicaly stereotype of being "schoolyard bullies" that "prey on the weak". Very applicable to this class, a study found that bullying is occuring violently over social media. Sociologist Robert Faris found that much of the social media bullying is done for status reasons. Kids want to be "on top" of the social world and a lot of times, this transfers over to popularity at school. Once students are considered "popular", not only do they do more bullying but more bullying is done to them as well. The also found that incidents of aggression are very likely in affluent communitiesand 81% of bullying is never reported.

This was a fantastic research study because it was relevant to important topics going on in today's world. The excellent analysis of the studies were easy to follow and they helped to "tell a story", an important factor in research according to the Moodle article. The study was also plenty valid and I especially appreciated the use of statistics. They kept me wanting to read more.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/10/us/ac-360-bullying-study/index.html