Search Engine Journal: Google Surveys Is Shutting Down; Here Are 6 Alternatives. “Google announces it’s shutting down market research product Google Surveys. The service will be unavailable after November 1, and users will have another month to download historical data.”
Music Connection: New Survey: Trends & Concerns In Audio Archiving. “Based on key topics raised during an Iron Mountain Entertainment Services (IMES) and Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing (P&E Wing) co-hosted 2021 summit ‘Protecting Legacies: The Art, Science and Value of Music Archives,’ IMES, the P&E Wing and the Audio Engineering Society (AES) developed a survey to assess current practices and challenges in audio archiving. The survey was sent to approximately 4,000 members of the P&E Wing and 11,000 members of the AES.”
How-To Geek: Google Forms vs. Microsoft Forms: Which Should You Use?. “You can create a form or quiz easily using both services. The interfaces are comparable with no standout differences. So when it comes down to what one service offers over the other, a certain feature might be the tie-breaker you need to decide between them. Let’s look at how Google Forms and Microsoft Forms differ.”
University at Buffalo: What’s the prevailing opinion on social media? Look at the flocks, says UB researcher. “…collective views on a topic or issue expressed on social media, distinct from the conclusions determined through survey-based public opinion polling, have never been easy to determine. But the ‘murmuration’ framework developed and tested by Yini Zhang, PhD, an assistant professor of communication in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, and her collaborators addresses challenges like identifying online demographics and factoring for opinion manipulation that are characteristic on these digital battlegrounds of public discourse.”
Department of Justice: Justice Department Warns About Fake Post-Vaccine Survey Scams. “Consumers receive the surveys via email and text message, and are told that, as a gift for filling out the survey, they can choose from various free prizes, such as an iPad Pro. The messages claim that the consumers need only pay shipping and handling fees to receive their prize. Victims provide their credit card information and are charged for shipping and handling fees, but never receive the promised prize. Victims also are exposing their personally identifiable information (PII) to scammers, thereby increasing the probability of identity theft.”
Hongkiat: 10 Best WordPress Plugins to Create Forms, Polls & Surveys. “It is a well-known fact that one of the best ways to engage users on your website and gather significant user insights, is through polls, forms and surveys. For websites built on the WordPress platform, there is an abundance of free plugins you can take advantage of. However, to save you from the tiring effort of searching the best WordPress plugins for polls and surveys, I have gathered here some of the top choices I’ve come to know, use and experience.”
BetaNews: Facebook Viewpoints will pay you money to complete surveys, but you shouldn’t do it. “Today, Facebook launches a new program that is seemingly designed to take advantage of poorer people — it will pay them paltry amounts of money in exchange for their valuable data. Called ‘Facebook Viewpoints,’ users install an app for Android or iOS, sign up for the service, and answer personal questions. In exchange, the social network will deposit cash into their PayPal accounts. “
ModernRetail: Facebook ramps up customer feedback surveys to crack down on misleading e-commerce ads. “When Facebook first announced the surveys last June, it said that users could give feedback by visiting their Ads Activity tab. But, shortly after rolling out the feature, Facebook started inserting these surveys into users’ News Feeds, increasing the likelihood that they would answer them.”
Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW): What our transition to online polling means for decades of phone survey trends. “The fact that many public opinion surveys today are conducted online is no secret to avid poll watchers. What is not well known, however, is what this migration to online polling means for the country’s trove of data documenting American public opinion over the past four decades, on issues ranging from abortion and immigration to race relations and military interventions. Specifically, can pollsters just add new online results to a long chain of phone survey results, or is this an apples-to-oranges situation that requires us to essentially throw out the historical data and start anew?”
Cornell University: Roper Center to create world’s most comprehensive health opinion database. “The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, housed at Cornell, has been awarded a grant to provide an easily searchable portal on the public’s views about health dating back to 1935.”
Poynter: This tool makes custom surveys that are actually accurate. This article is delivered like a transcript, so let me do a brief quote from one of the participants: “So maybe you’re a journalist in Virginia or New Jersey, and you want to ask people what they want their newly elected politicians to focus on first. Veracio lets you specify a location that you’re focusing on. What’s interesting about this tool to me is it helps give you a better understanding of what you’re hearing and how it compares with a specific population. As we all know, often the people we hear from the most aren’t totally representative of the places we cover.”
Google Blog: Now on iOS: Get paid to share your opinion. “There’s an old saying—the customer is always right. And certainly, the world’s best companies are always eager to hear directly from customers. That’s one reason we created Google Opinion Rewards, an app that pays people to give their opinions and answer questions from companies, big and small. Today we’re bringing Google Opinion Rewards to iOS.”
Google has announced Google Surveys 360. “Now for the first time, marketers of all types can get fast, accurate market research — in combination with their marketing performance and analytics data — to help them make key business decisions at the speed of today’s digital world. Google Surveys 360 makes doing market research as easy as buying an airline ticket with your favorite app. It’s available for purchase today in the U.S and Canada as part of the Analytics 360 Suite.”
Reuters has launched a new tool for the elections that sounds pretty ambitious. “Powered by the largest presidential tracking poll ever attempted, the new tool shows how each of the candidates’ support in the Reuters/Ipsos poll translates at the state level in the Electoral College and how changes in turnout among demographic and political groups could affect the result. Users are able to adjust turnout of different voter groups themselves to see how that could change who wins and who loses the election.”
WIRED: Want More Accurate Polls? Maybe Ask Twitter. “Traditional polling methods aren’t working the way they used to. Upstart analytics firms like Civis and conventional pollsters like PPP, Ipsos, and Pew Research Institute have all been hunting for new, more data-centric ways to uncover the will of the whole public, rather than just the tiny slice willing to answer a random call on their landline. The trending solution is to incorporate data mined from the Internet, especially from social media. It’s a crucial, overdue shift. Even though the Internet is a cesspool of trolls, it’s also where millions of Americans go to express opinions that pollsters might not even think to ask about.”
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