Welcome to my Thinking World…

Abstract:

Publicity surrounding recent outbreaks of food-borne illness has raised concern among American consumers about the microbial safety of produce delivered through food marketing channels. In 2006 an E. coli outbreak was traced to spinach, resulting in millions of dollars in losses for the produce industry; in early 2008 a large salmonella scare linked to tomatoes also dampened industry profits. To investigate the effects of these concerns, a large random survey of American consumers from the Gallup Panel was performed in October 2008 to investigate the extent to which consumers were concerned about the microbial safety of produce and how they coped with those concerns in the food marketing channel. Read more

Abstract:

In mail surveys, researchers often face the challenge of too little space in the questionnaire for the number of questions they wish to administer. Oftentimes certain structuring methods are used in order to maximize the data gathering efficiency of a given set of questions. One such method involves using a grid format in which two or more questions with the same response options are grouped together in a ‘grid’ of rows and columns. In this way, the response options are not repeated for every question in the grid, which minimizes not only the use of space in the questionnaire, but also respondent’s burden of comprehending new scale for each question in the grid. Read more

Abstract:

The proliferation of cell phone (CP) usage in the U.S. has forced many survey researchers to include supplementary samples of CP numbers to protect against potential undercoverage errors now encountered with standard landline (LL) sampling designs.   However, even though CP usage continues to rise, the national hit rate from CP number banks (hovering around 60%) is only slightly higher than the LL analog. Even with this moderate hit rate, inefficiencies in CP designs exist, especially for those that screen for cell phone only (CPO) users. Read more

Abstract:

A growing number of Americans with diverse telephone service histories are considering giving up their household landline phone access and planning to use cell phones exclusively. While previous studies on cell phone-only individuals have documented consistent trends in demographics such as in age (younger), place (urban), residency ownership (rent) and income (lower), little is known about the demographics of those who are cutting the landline telephone cord in favor of cell phone-only status. Read more

Abstract:

Does one’s religious and spiritual orientation influence his or her behavior in marketplace? A verdict is not clear. This exploratory study presents the results of a religious orientation survey administered using an online panel. The results show that well-developed measures of religious orientation (internal, external, and interactional – Batson and Ventis (1982)) are related to how Americans buy and consume. Read more