Statistical analyses are amazing, underrated tools. All scientific fields depend on discoveries in statistics to make inferences and draw conclusions. Without statistics, advances in engineering, medicine, and science that have greatly improved the quality of life would not have been possible. Statistics is the Rodney Dangerfield of academic subjects – it never gets the respect it deserves.

Statistics is central to market research and polling. We use statistics to describe our findings and understand the relationships between variables in our data sets. Statistics are the most important tools we have as researchers.

However, we often misuse these tools. I firmly believe that pollsters and market researchers overdo it with statistics. Basic, statistical analyses are easy to understand, but complicated ones are not. Researchers like to get into complex statistics because it lends an air of expertise to what we do.

Unfortunately, most sophisticated techniques are impossible to convey to “normal” people who may not have a statistical background, and this tends to describe the decision-makers we support.

I learned long ago that when working with a dataset, any result that will be meaningful will likely be uncovered by using simple descriptive statistics and cross-tabulations. Multivariate techniques can tease out more subtle relationships in the data. Still, the clients (primarily marketers) we work with are not looking for subtleties – they want some conclusions that leap off the page from the data.

If a result is so subtle that it needs complicated statistics to find, it is likely not a large enough result to be acted upon by a client.

Because of this, we tend to use multivariate techniques to confirm what we see with more straightforward methods. Not always – as there are certainly times when the client objectives call for sophisticated techniques. But, as researchers, our default should be to use the most straightforward designs possible.

I always admire researchers who make complicated things understandable. That should be the goal of statistical analyses. George Terhanian of Electric Insights has developed a way to use sophisticated statistical techniques to answer some of the most fundamental questions a marketer will ask.

In his article “Hit? Stand? Double? Master’ likely effects’ to make the right call”, George describes his revolutionary process. It is sophisticated behind the scenes, but I like the simplicity in the questions it can address.

He has created a simulation technique that makes sense of complicated data sets. You may measure hundreds of things on a survey and have an excellent profile of the attitudes and behaviors of your customer base. But, where should you focus your investments? This technique demonstrates the likely effects of changes.

As marketers, we cannot directly increase sales. But we can establish and influence attitudes and behaviors that result in sales. Our problem is often to identify which of these attitudes and behaviors to address.

For instance, if I can convince my customer base that my product is environmentally responsible, how many of them can I count on to buy more of my product? The type of simulator described in this article can answer this question, and as a marketer, I can then weigh if the investment necessary is worth the probable payoff.

George created a simulator on some data from a recent Crux Poll. Our poll showed that 17% of Americans trust pollsters. George’s analysis shows that trust in pollsters is directly related to their performance in predicting elections.

Modeling the Crux Poll data showed that if all Americans “strongly agreed” that presidential election polls do a good job of predicting who will win, trust in pollsters/polling organizations would increase by 44 million adults. If Americans feel “extremely confident” that pollsters will accurately predict the 2024 election, trust in pollsters will increase by an additional 40 million adults.

If we are worried that pollsters are untrusted, this suggests that improving the quality of our predictions should address the issue.

Putting research findings in these sorts of terms is what gets our clients’ attention. 

Marketers need this type of quantification because it can plug right into financial plans. Researchers often hear that the reports we provide are not “actionable” enough. There is not much more actionable than showing how many customers would be expected to change their behavior if we successfully invest in a marketing campaign to change an attitude.

Successful marketing is all about putting the probabilities in your favor. Nothing is certain, but as a marketer, your job is to decide where best place your resources (money and time). This type of modeling is a step in the right direction for market researchers.