Topic view: Research Industry

Online samples – where lighting a few fires might help

By Tim Macer on 31st Jul 2010.

Will a new and much-needed initiative to provide industry-wide tools to monitor online sample quality put fire into the hands of mortals?

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Bad data can mean more than bad research

By Tim Macer on 27th Jan 2010.

Are research companies being too naive in assuming their quality processes will detect errors in their data, or realising how serious the consequences of misleading research can be?

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Panel crazy

By Sheila Wilson on 3rd Jan 2010.

I decided to try being a panelist for a few weeks and was shocked by the number of errors and problems I encountered.

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The long tail for tech firms

By Tim Macer on 10th Dec 2009.

The recession has been acutely felt by MR technology providers, but many are now reporting that have seemed brighter since the summer.

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Measures of happiness

By Tim Macer on 15th Sep 2009.

Yesterday’s FT had two lengthy stories on the inadequacies of the GDP as a narrow measure of success. “GDP branded a poor gauge of progress” examined the report from the Commission on Economic Performance Measurement, headed by Joseph Stiglitz, and another “France to count happiness in GDP” reported President Nicolas Sarkozy’s attempts to persuade other [...]

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Translation on the fly (or on the sly)

By Tim Macer on 7th Sep 2009.

A new plug-in to the Firefox web browser that promises to take webpages in any unfamiliar language and, as you browse, translate them into English or the language of your choice.

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A final goodbye to Quantime

By Sheila Wilson on 12th Aug 2009.

A fond farewell to Quantime, warts and all, which was taken over by SPSS more than ten years ago. SPSS has in turn been taken over by IBM this year. Quantime’s original software product, Quantum, still lives on after more than 30 years.

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Predictive and precarious

By Tim Macer on 28th Jul 2009.

So the news breaks that SPSS has pulled off a marriage with an IT industry behemoth. While many have speculated that SPSS was hoping to get bought by Microsoft, the big surprise is it’s the sober suits at IBM that have carried off the bride. Now, the real reason for the big name change is [...]

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Has the Insight Show overheated?

By Tim Macer on 3rd Jul 2009.

Technology was an aspect of this week’s Insight Show that the exhibition’s promoters were majoring on, yet on the ground the number of technology providers exhibiting at the show was thinner than ever. The day I was there seemed to be the one when competing sales teams converged on the orange carpet between their stands to chat about who was up to what and complain about the heat.

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A frugal future is no bad thing

By Tim Macer on 14th Jun 2009.

An interesting lunch with B, who is VP of a research software provider, visiting London. “So, what are the changes you see in research software” he asks, and I find myself answering the question at some length on the changes I don’t see happening, and how unambitious research companies are when it comes to using [...]

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Do research communities provide a new way to engage with customers for research – or are they just panels on steroids?

By Tim Macer on 5th Jun 2009.

Communities do seem to be generating a buzz this year. There is a discussion about whether communities should have an incentive or not, and surprisingly, many of the client-run communities run very effectively with no incentive,

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A disappearing trick: Dimensions and SPSS

By Tim Macer on 1st Jun 2009.

It’s ten years since SPSS announced its vision for the future of research software in 1999: its ‘Vision 2000’. Its dedicated MR division, SPSS MR was tasked with turning this vision into reality and the product was named Dimensions. A stream of products eventually started to appear for customers using the firm’s legacy products like [...]

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