At AnalyticsIQ, good isn’t really good enough for us. We want to fuel your marketing strategies with better data that hits all the right notes so you can target the right audience. So, when it comes to research, we carry out an extensive audience validation process to ensure the data and audience profiles we create are valid, relevant, timely, and, in short, on point! Our teams go to great lengths to ensure our data is very reliable and offers context through elements of cognitive psychology.
Interested in knowing more about it? Here are the steps we followed to validate the Green Personas in our recent study.
1 – Select and Engage a Panel of Survey Respondents
The representative sample population is one that greatly affects the validity of the data gathered. Therefore, our first step is to pick a panel that aligns with our research goals for better engagement. Now, here’s how we carry out our surveying process.
You can download the full research report on Green Personas here.
2 – Carry Out Nationwide and Representative Survey Research
Nationwide and representative surveys ensure our audience profiles reflect the traits, behaviors, and perceptions of the broader population. So, we select a sample representative of the country to capture the composition of the population to ensure our research is not biased. As an example, in our study on Green Personas, our sample represented the US population across age, gender, and race.
3 – Obtain Deeper Demographic Characteristics Upon Informed Consent
Respondents greatly influence the quality and outcome of any survey research, which is why we heavily focus on informed consent. Maintaining transparency and being explicit about the objectives, also increases the engagement of participants.
Obtaining demographic characteristics is important because they aid with cross-comparisons, sub-categorization, and gaining a good understanding of the targeted audience. Following informed consent, the respondents provided us with a range of deeper demographic characteristics.
4 – Cover a Multitude of Topics
When it comes to the research we carry out to create audience personas, we aim to make it as comprehensive as possible. We touch on a multitude of factors that may influence the segmentation and creation of audience profiles. They also aid in our audience validation process. Factors are selected based on existing studies on the topic, newer adaptations, and industry-related assessment systems.
In this study on eco-conscious consumers, we were not just keen on identifying behavior related to climate change. We also wanted to find out the underlying cognitive factors that propel such sentiments.
Therefore, the survey questions covered many topics, such as the participant’s cognitive flexibility, belief in climate change, pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs), emotional reactions to climate change, connectedness to nature, and time in nature.
5 – Compensate for Participation
We know that a good part of the efficacy of our studies lies in the hands of the participants who agree to answer our surveys, sharing their valuable time.
Compensation through a tangible benefit is a means through which we motivate the respondents to complete the survey from beginning to end and provide their thoughts wherever needed. It also aids in gathering high-quality data that is pivotal for the creation of custom audiences.
You can download the full research report on Green Personas here.
6 – Measuring Attitudes and Actions of Eco-Conscious Consumers
At AnalyticsIQ, we utilize a blend of industry-recognized techniques and our own questioning methods to capture well-rounded data, especially when measuring subjective and complex phenomena like behavior, emotions, and attitudes. We also employ our own questioning methods and use scales like the Likert scale or semantic differential questions to assess the strength of agreement/feeling or intensity of the experience.
Quantitative approaches to attitudinal data collection help in assessing the existence of the measured attitude in a large population. It also helps in carrying out comparisons and evaluating how attitudes have changed over time. In addition, we also use qualitative methods where necessary to examine underlying reasons and complement our quantitative findings.
For our study, we utilized the CCFQ measure to assess cognitive ability and the BCC measure to assess attitudes related to climate change in order to better understand pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs). We also developed our own assessment questions regarding climate change to gauge the likeliness or frequency of eco-friendly behavior.
7 – Review Existing Data and Consumer Profiles for Audience Validation
Survey validation is an integral step to ensure the quality and reliability of our studies and, thereby, the data and information we publish for our clients’ use. It also ensures that our findings mirror the current trends and that our sample population is representative of the overall population concerned.
We start off by validating our survey questions by getting them reviewed by an expert panel and running pilot tests. Once we have gathered survey responses and completed our analysis, we validate the findings by comparing them against those of public opinion surveys and academic research conducted on the topic.
We used a similar approach for audience validation in this study on Green Personas. It helped us ensure that the attitudes and sentiments harbored by our sample population regarding climate change represented the general sentiment of the US population.
8 – Replicating the Variables Using Original Methods and Validating Against New Survey Results
We want to ensure our data and audience profiles are a reliable and close reflection of the present trends. Replication is one of the ways through which we eliminate inconsistencies, fill gaps related to changes and development in the field, and reinforce the validity of our studies.
In this study, we aimed to replicate our Green Personas unveiled in our 2020 study on eco-conscious consumers. We hypothesized that the recreated Green Personas would predict PEBs, similar to the findings of our previous study. After running a univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Green Personas as the independent variable and average PEB score as the dependent variable, we unveiled a partial disparity between the original and current study.
The change also reflected the growing awareness about climate change and progressions in beliefs about it. Moreover, the increased acceptance of the worsening crisis is critical for eco-friendly and sustainable brands when positioning them strategically in front of concerned buyers.
Make Use of Awesome Data with AnalyticsIQ
AnalyticsIQ’s remarkable reputation as a leading marketing data creator comes from our commitment to bringing accurate and transformative data and audience personas. Our team of dedicated data scientists and analysts carry out a vigorous audience validation process for every study. We help brands deliver top-performing advertising campaigns using them. We also partner with large data teams to give them the fuel they need to create best-in-class data strategies for their organizations.
If you are a data geek like us and are interested in learning more about how we gather, validate, and refine the data we publish, reach out to us at sales@analyticsiq.com. Let’s discuss and collaborate!