Anyone could do better - Taverner Poll

Taverner Research ran a Poll on Friday in association with The Sun Herald, to monitor NSW voter sentiment on the two main State Government parties and their leaders.

Pollster Philip Mitchell-Taverner noted that whilst there are still a couple of years to go in Labor running New South Wales, the party is experiencing very negative attitudes from voters. This is despite high hopes pinned by Labor administrators, on the recent appointment of Nathan Rees to replace Maurice Iemma as leader.

The findings from the Taverner Poll suggest strongly that voters are saying any opposition party could do a better job. This most likely infers that voters are in fact “hoping” such improvement would occur, as there is really nothing an opposition can do to prove it.

Voters are saying that the opposition, if in power, would do a better job on virtually anything – health, public transport, roads and even education. Nothing the government touches in New South Wales these days seems to attract any praise.

The poll had really good news for Barry O’Farrell, the opposition leader, with over half of all voters preferring him over Nathan Rees as their Premier. Only one in three prefer Rees. The boost for O’Farrell continues an upward trend in his popularity, though many might apply the “drovers dog” analogy (made famous by Paul Keating in a similar kind of context some 15 years ago).

As noted by Philip Mitchell-Taverner, “Labor in NSW has created a strongly and widely held perception that it is incapable of effectively managing the NSW economy. Voters now are of the strong opinion that an Opposition under O’Farrell is far more capable of providing the leadership they want and would be shoe-in to win. The only thing in Labors’ favour is that it still has two years in office to turn everything around."

Philip Mitchell-Taverner further noted that Rees remains safe at present as ..."despite low ratings for the Nathan Rees, he seems set to stay as leader, with none of the more obvious alternatives having strong support to displace him.”

One possible option available to the government lies in the coming State budget. Voters are crying out for more money to be directed at health – 61% say this is the biggest State Government funding priority at present. This finding comes at a time when the Taverner Poll also shows that almost 8 voters out of ten (78%) would prefer hospitals and health services to be managed by the Federal Government instead. This is a trend that the State Government should seriously address if it is to appeal more to the public in a way that will really resonate with voters.

Philip Mitchell-Taverner further noted that whilst there is a perception that the health system, in particular, might well be better administered federally, a majority of NSW voters are against abolishing State Governments.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/rees-losing-grip-on-power-20090530-br1m.html

Climate change press release - 15.03.09

More than eight in ten Australians believe that climate change is happening and that humans are at least partially responsible. An overwhelming nine in ten of these people want Australia to take a leading international role in tackling this issue. They say we should not wait for larger countries to spell out their policies first.

When the views of climate change ‘sceptics’ (the 16% of people who accept that the climate is changing but who doubt that humans have caused it) are taken into account, a massive 83% of Australians still favour Australian leadership according to the poll.

These findings have just been released from Thermometer Survey, a commercial syndicated research based service which provides information to several state governments and large private and not‐for‐profit organisations in Australia. They come from the most recent wave of one of the largest surveys of community opinion on climate change to ever be released publicly, conducted in February and which confirmed results from an earlier baseline survey conducted last September.

The survey was administered among a representative sample of 1606 Australians in September 2008 and updated among 1510 in February 2009. Given the size of the samples, the result is estimated to be the same, plus or minus 2.5%, as if the entire Australian population were to be polled, and would be repeated nineteen times out of twenty. By showing that the September result was replicated in February gives the poll significant credibility.

Only two percent of Australians (just one in fifty) deny the climate is changing. More than eight in ten (81%) believe human activity is at least partially responsible for climate change while 14% say there is no connection between changes in the natural environment and human development. Among those Australians who do believe there is a connection, 90% in September and 91% in February encourage early action by Australia.

In light of the global financial crisis, a new question was added to the February survey to test Australians’ resolve to act on climate change in the face of deteriorating economic conditions. 59% reported that they believe Australia should not wait until the economy crisis passes before addressing climate change but that we should take action on both issues at once. Only about one in eight believe action on the economic crisis should take priority.

Respondents were asked in both September and February to name the three most serious issues facing Australia on an unprompted basis. In September, the environment topped the list, mentioned by 46%. The economy came second, mentioned by 33%. Five months later, the two issues had reversed positions. The economy shot ahead 36 points to capture 69% of mentions and the environment fell just five points to be mentioned by 41%.

Thermometer Surveys (www.thermometersurvey.com) is the trading name for Think Taverner Pty Ltd, a partnership between Taverner Research and Think: Insight & Advice. Thermometer Survey is an ongoing tracking study of community opinion in relation to climate change and its detailed findings are available by subscription. Thermometer Surveys also undertakes custom projects for individual clients interested in the people side of climate change.

New Healthcare Director - Sarah Dixey

Taverner is pleased to announce the appointment of Sarah Dixey as Research Director – Healthcare. Sarah joins us from Merck Sharp & Dohme (Australia) where she held the position of Senior Customer & Business Insights Partner. Sarah’s appointment boosts the capabilities and expertise of the established Healthcare team.

Sarah is a customer focused, energetic, resourceful market research and customer insights professional with Australiana and International experience, and has demonstrated success in delivering strategic and tactical insights to a range of clients. She has a sophisticated understanding of quantitative and qualitative research techniques and an ability to use this knowledge to solve complex business needs.

She has expertise in brand positioning, brand health, needs based segmentation, creative development research, new product development, advertising testing, customer loyalty and satisfaction and ethnographic research.

In addition to Healthcare, Sarah has experience in a wide range of B2C and B2B markets including finance, FMCG and telecommunications. She also has an MPhil Marketing (Cranfield, UK) and BSC (Hons) Applied Biology (UK) and her career has included roles of Research Manager at MBF and Commonwealth Bank, Account Director at TNS, and Senior Client Service Manager at Research International (NZ).

Welcome Sarah.

Happy birthday your Majesty

In October, Managing Director Philip Mitchell-Taverner was interviewed by Tadahiko Yamaguchi, Consul for the Consulate-General of Japan in relation to his views on both State and Federal politics. The meeting took place following a successful Taverner Research poll published in the Herald Sun which accurately predicted the results of the the recent Ryde by-election for the seat vacated by John Watkins which saw a shift of 24% from ALP to Liberal.

In appreciation of his insight and recognition of his position as a respected pollster, Philip was invited to attend a gala reception at the residence of the Consul-General to celebrate the birthday of His Majesty the Emperor of Japan.

The reception was attended by the elite of Japanese community in Sydney. Speeches from local and international dignitaries touched on the history of Australian-Japanese relations dating back to 1870's.

Report from Montreal

Taverner's managing director, Philip Mitchell-Taverner, returned to Australia on Monday from overseas, where he spent time talking to market research agencies in London and attending the ESOMAR conference in Montreal.

Some of the keynote speakers in Montreal were outstanding, including Hernando Soto, President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru, who talked about the problems facing developing countries as they try to break into the globalised developed economy and Kate Adie, BBC journalist and author, on doing business on the world front.

But the best presentation, according to Philip, was the very last paper. The speaker was Richard Eisermann, who gave an extraordinary account of how important it is to look after your customer. Eisermann outlined the some of the barriers that exist to communication with the customer and what might be done to overcome those barriers.

Philip was asked, "If you had to pick one thing that you learned, what would it be?"
His response: "What we are doing in Australia is equal to anything being done in the wider world game."

The limits of statistics

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

-Benjamin Disraeli

Statistics is a powerful and useful way of understanding the world. The advent of the modern computer, faster processing speeds, and software packages like SPSS and SAS have meant that statistics is easier than ever. Techniques and methods that were once the realm of professors and statisticians have become widespread and mainstream.

Is this a good thing? Not necessarily: as these techniques have become more and more widespread, the people who are using them know less and less about what they are doing. One of the biggest dangers is in the use of statistics where it does not belong.

Nasim Taleb argues in an essay at Edge.org that a misunderstanding of statistics has led to the current credit crisis and turmoil on financial markets. This is not hindsight wisdom: Taleb predicted the failure of Fannie Mae two years before Fannie Mae in fact collapsed.

One industry that has been using statistics more and more, but where there is very little deep understanding of the methods, is finance. In particular, says Taleb, they have been trying to calculate expected returns on thick-tailed distributions (such as power law distributions), which is a recipe for disaster.

What this meant in practice was that financial markets did not take into account the effect of rare, extreme events. They were simply assuming that such things did not need to factor into their decisions.

Consider this example: imagine you have bought a house that you are living in, and you are thinking about getting insurance in case your house burns down. You think back to last year. Your house did not burn down, and none of your friends' houses burned down. The odds are pretty small, so you decide not to get insurance. Over the next couple of years, you save several hundred dollars that you would otherwise have spent on house insurance. The risk you are taking is that you are betting against an unlikely extreme event, namely a catastrophic house fire.

Nasim also talks about increases in efficiency, which he says have been over-valued against the cost of increasing vulnerability. When organisations become more efficient, they are more vulnerable to extreme events. A company with no backup server is more efficient than a company with a backup server (because they can save on salaries, equipment, etc) but it is more vulnerable to mishap. It's easy to see the error in these concrete examples, but harder when the mistake is buried in the abstractions of financial markets.

The human brain does not compute statistics or probability well. These are domains that are prone to mistakes, misunderstandings and confusion. Computers have done wonders for modern society, but this is the downside. They have placed powerful tools in the hands of people who do not understand them.


UPDATE: An article came out in the Wall Street Journal today, saying roughly the same thing:

I called some old timers in the risk-management world to see what went wrong.

I fully expected them to tell me that the problem was that the alarms were blaring and red lights were flashing on the risk machines and greedy Wall Street bosses ignored the warnings to keep the profits flowing...

...it wasn’t quite that simple.

In fact, most Wall Street computer models radically underestimated the risk of the complex mortgage securities, they said. That is partly because the level of financial distress is “the equivalent of the 100-year flood,” in the words of Leslie Rahl, the president of Capital Market Risk Advisors, a consulting firm.

Depth interviews: getting it right

There is no substitute for an experienced and talented depth (in-depth) interviewer, however, getting the behind the scenes process right can also make a world of difference to the quality of the findings. There are four critical components to a depth interview: recruitment, preparation,, interviewing, and reporting.

1) Recruitment
Finding and recruiting respondents is a vital process and is more analogous to sales than to research: suitable clients must be found, they should be aware of what is involved, and they should be positively disposed to the interview. A depth interview can be ruined from the start by recruiting poor quality respondents, not informing the respondents sufficiently, or putting respondents offside.

Poor quality recruiting can result from:

a. Specifications not being written tightly.
b. Recruiters working to a ‘number’ quota, rather than a ‘quality’ quota (i.e. to a tight specification).
c. The researcher not fully exploring or understanding the client’s rationale behind the research, this is typically more crucial in a depth interview scenario as a depth interview is often the first step that will guide the development of other research materials (quant questionnaires, focus group topic guides etc).
d. Offering an incentive that is higher than expected for the time taken or the position (if business related) of the respondent, this can lead to ‘money hungry’ respondents in it only for the money.
e. Lack of feedback between client, research and recruiter.

2) Interviewer preparation
The interviewer needs to be fully briefed on the project, the respondent or the pool of respondents, and the topic of the interview. Ideally the interviewer is someone who is already involved in the project, and has previous experience with the subject. Written briefing notes should be created as a way of making sure that adequate preparation has been done. Interviewer briefing notes should always be shown to the client prior to the interview.

3) Conducting the interview
Whether on the phone or face to face, keeping an interview on track is an acquired skill. The interviewee needs to feel relaxed enough to be able to expand on the topic. This can only come from interacting with a skilled, experienced interviewer who can make them feel like a friend. The interviewer must balance the competing demands of meeting the pre-set objectives as defined in the briefing notes, and recognising when unforeseen topics and information begin to surface.

4) Decoding and reporting
The sooner notes are made after the interview the better. If left overnight, memory will distort and blur. The interviewer will be more certain the next day of the 'general findings' but less certain of details, or of anything that contradicts the general findings. For reporting, the mass of information in the notes has to be boiled down to simple findings. The job of the researcher is to make decisions about what is important and what is not, and provide digestible, actionable conclusions for the client.

Above all, rapport is critical. If the interviewee feels that they like and respect the interviewer, then a wealth of information can be gleaned. If the interviewer doesn't like or doesn't respect you, then the enterprise could be wasted.

Taverner Research has a highly experienced team of depth interviewers and in-house facilities that offer clients excellent quality and value for money.

3001- Special Number Plates, Prize Winners

Taverner Research is proud to announce the first prize winner of the Special Plates Research Competition that was held from 26/06/08 until 22/07/08, is Carol Liccioni. The winning first prize is $500 cash. Ben Jay is the runner up and will receive $500 cash wishlist voucher. Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to all those who participated.

Issues in survey design: don't know, don't care, neither, other

Don Porritt recently had conversation with Jon Krosnick, a professor of social psychology at Stanford University, and internationally recognised expert on survey design about putting "none of these" as an option in an association matrix, or in fact, anywhere in a survey. The issue arose out of a Lightspeed presentation where they recommended always having a "none of these" option to reduce 'satisficing' (in short, giving a plausible but rubbish answer).

Don and Krosnick agreed that "none of these" should always be offered, and not just for people who don't have a good answer. In some situations, it's a legitimate answer in its own right. If an interviewer asks you which breakfast cereal you like, and you have tried them all and hate them all, then "none of these" is the answer you should give.

Krosnick added that this is different from "don't know" or "don't care." He suggested that before asking people their opinion about a list of things, such as a list of brands, a filter question or series of filter questions could be used. For example,

Filter question 1. "Do you have any knowledge of breakfast cereals you can find in the supermarket these days?"

Filter question 2. "do you care at all about the quality of breakfast cereals these days?"

This way, you elimate the people who either don't know, or don't care, from the sample of responses.

Coalition takes big lead in New South Wales

NSW voters are disillusioned with the State Labor Government led by Morris Iemma, according to the latest Taverner poll, published in the Sun Herald and also reported in the Sydney Morning Herald and on radio and television news.

There has been a sharp fall in support, to the extent that if an election were held right now, there would be a landslide win to the Liberal/National Coalition. Just 4 months ago, Labor would have continued its winning streak of well over 10 years.

There have been many issues leading to the decline in Labor support in NSW, not least of which have been the Iguana Joe’s alleged staff intimidation issue involving former NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca and his Federal MP wife Belinda Neal, transport crises, the Spit Bridge malfunction, tollway cash-back disclosures and the much criticized proposal to privatize the State’s power industry.

In the latest Taverner Poll, Labor trails the coalition by a massive 12 points, at 44 to 56 percent. In February Labor was still holding onto the small lead it had at the 2007 election, on 51 to 49 percent. Not all of these problems are attributed to just Morris Iemma’s handling of his leadership. There is no-one in the State Labor party who voters consistently believe preferable. For now, Morris Iemma remains the best option with voters despite widely reported calls from many for him to stand down.