Modern Metrix

Why "Pace of Life" is Faster in the Cities

This short but fascinating article in The Atlantic explains why pedestrians in larger cities walk faster:

"Levine measured three "pace of life" variables — walking speed, work speed, and clock accuracy — though for the purposes of this post, in keeping with the previous literature, we'll focus on the first. The top ten cities for walking speed, according to Levine, were as follows: Dublin, Amsterdam, Bern/Zurich, London, Frankfurt, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Nairobi, and Rome.

With the exception of Nairobi — insert joke here about Kenyans crushing everyone at the New York City Marathon — the fastest walking cities were from wealthy nations. The statistical analysis confirmed this general perception: two of the three strongest social predictors of walking speed were a country's G.D.P. and its purchasing power parity (the other was its individualism). Indeed, when Levine considered all his "pace of life" metrics, he found that pace of life was swifter in "economically productive countries" like Western Europe and Japan than in undeveloped countries."

 

Impact of Survey Length on Measurement Quality and Participation Rates

This interesting study by Lightspeed Research looked at the relationship between the online survey length and quality of measurement and participation. In summary, study found that longer surveys result in higher drop out rates, and less reliable measures of constructs of interest. Interestingly, there was relationship between certain demographic and probability of dropping out, although that did not necessarily affect the representativeness of the overall sample:

"Respondents who drop out are somewhat different than those who complete the survey. Demographically, they are likely to be older, retired, male and from smaller households without children. In addition, those who drop out are less likely to do all the grocery shopping and tend to purchase snack foods less often. Despite their differences, the dropouts are so few in number that their exclusion does not harm the representativeness of the sample."

The study also found that, possibly, due to the fatigue, the quality of certain measure was affected by the survey length: 

"In the Lightspeed Research study, the concept scores for the 8-minute questionnaire tend to be higher than scores for the longer questionnaires. The 20- and 24-minute questionnaires receive fewer “definitely would buy” ratings compared to the 8-minute version. There are also several notable differences on liking, value, uniqueness, and believability between the 8-minute version and the longer versions (see Table 2). Also, several important differences occur between the 8-minute questionnaire and the two versions with the extra upfront questions."

The position of questions pertaining to the main concept in the survey relatively to other attitudinal and demographic questions may also result in biased and poor quality responses. 

Using Consumer Data to Change their Shopping Habits

Fascinating article in NYT magazine on how companies use consumers' data to change and shape their shopping habits. 

"As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy."

Unfortunately, author makes it sound a bit too creepy and invasive. But yep, that's what we do.

OkCupid's Data and Their Analysts - A Match Made in Heaven (Valentine's Day Post)

Interesting article in AdAge about OkCupid dating service and how their use their treasure trove of psychographic and behavioral data in new innovative ways:

"OKCupid also mines its data sets to conduct market research for brands, such as big-box retailers. By examining the way women in certain target ZIP codes describe themselves on their profiles and answer questions on the site, Mr. Yagan believes brands can uncover findings that can help them market better to current and prospective customers alike."

 That includes including sharing insights on their awesome blog OkTrends.

Profiles of E-bay Users According to Hunch

Interesting infographic report from the "personalization graph" company Hunch that developed psychographic and behavioral profiles of e-bay users based on data from 70,000 respondents. Among the most interesting findings: e-bay users are more likely to be happy with their job , prefer impressionalism and surrealism when it comes to art, and read "The New Yorker". Non-users, on the other hand, are more likely to be unhappy with their jobs, prefer realism and romanticism, and are more likely to read "People" magazine. 

4.74 Degrees of Separation

Interesting article in NYTimes about most recent replication of Milgram's famous "small world experiment". The original research introduced concept "six degrees of separation" - that any two people in the world are separated by only six intermediate connections. According to Facebook scientists, who analyzed data on 721 million active Facebook users with total of 69 billion friendships, that number now is down to 4.74. Of course, I would question definition of "friendship" used in the study (it was defined simply as a being "friends" on Facebook), nevertheless, the methodology and analysis are interesting. 

More detailed report is available on Facebook Data page here.  

Differences in content preferences across the social networks

The online advertising network Chitika compared the genres of sites that receive traffic from the major social networks (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Digg) and found differences in the content preferences across the networsk. In particular, according to the analysis of over 280,000 links, Twitter users are more like to consume news (47% of traffic), Facebook users are interested in news (28% of traffic) and community (17%), MySpacers prefer video games (28% of traffic) and entertainment (23%), and traffic from Digg is almost equally distributed between news, entertainment, technology and video games categories (~18% each).

Via Mashable

 

Peerset: Next Generation Psychographic Hyper-Targeting Tool

Techcrunch profiles Peerset, web startup that offers tool for automated data-driven psychographic profiling and ad placement recommendations based on content analysis.

TV Viewing and Political Party Affiliation

Interesting article in MediaPost on research conducted by TiVo on how TV programming preferences are associated with the party affiliation.

"The highest-rated show for those who identify themselves as Republicans was Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch," a show about real-life lobster fishermen in the rough and cold waters of Alaska. The show grabbed a 4.9 rating among Republican viewers, with an index of 130.2, which equates to some 30% over the average.

The second-best show was ABC's special "J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life," which took in a 3.8 Republican rating and a 125.2 index. ABC's "Wipeout," the reality athletic competition show, was in third with a 6.6 rating and a 116.2 index.

For those identified as Democrats, the best-rated show was TNT's "Saving Grace," a drama about an Oklahoma City detective who deals with crime and her guardian angel. It scored a 5.3 rating among Democrats and a 153.6 index -- the highest index for either party affiliation.

Almost as high for the Democrats was Bravo's "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List," which took in a 6.4 rating and a 151.2 index. "The Closer," another TNT show, was in third place with a 9.6 rating and a 138 index. The best-rated broadcast network show was NBC's "The Philanthropist," with a 5.8 rating and a 137.2 index."

Creatives vs. Quants in Advertising

Interesting article in Fortune on how number crunchers are gaining influence in advertising industry