Harvard Graduate Student Housing Survey

MM-II (PGP-1: 2013-2015)

Indian Institute of Management Lucknow

Prem Prakash Dewani

(Ph. D. , IIM Ahmedabad)

Assistant Prof. IIM-Lucknow

Survey Research Case: The Harvard Graduate Student Housing Survey Mode: Class Discussion & Presentation

Class Notes: by Prem Prakash Dewani

Objectives of the Case •

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Identifying potential contributions of surveys sur veys and marketing research in organizations. Learning in context the steps necessary to develop, design, write, and implement implement a  a successful questionnaire, and effective ways to analyse and present the resulting data. Gaining an appreciatio appreciation n of contem contemporary porary challenges associated with survey sur vey research. In particular, how to structure and write engaging self-administered self-administered questionnaires questionnaires,, how to leverage the Internet, how to create surveys that surveys that contribute to enhancing and maintaining customer relationships. Learning specific technical aspects related to the measurement of critical parameters such as price sensitivity and attribute importance. importance. Improving the skill of writing good survey questions q uestions..

Go through the survey questionnaire in Exhibit E xhibit 1 as a respondent. Reflect on your experience: experience: •

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What are your feelings, thoughts (e.g., what images come to your mind?) and emotions as you go along? What makes you want to stop, what drives you to continue? What is easy to answer, what is difficult? What are the merits of this questionnaire? What are apparent shortcomings?

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Reflect on your own experience with housing as a graduate student. Is there an important aspect of experience that was not captured by the 2001 survey? Write Writ e a question (or a block of questions) that should be added to the survey to capture that aspect in a manner that might impact decision decisi on making. Please don’t forg forget et to specify the format of the answer to your question (e.g., (e.g., a five point scale). Predict the average answer(s) answer(s) to your question(s) and the impact on actual decision making it might have. Try to achieve prof professionalism essionalism in your wordings.

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When looking back at the 2001 survey survey,, what news did it produce, what impact did it have? Can you attribute this impact to specific features of the survey or of the survey design process and circumst circumstances? ances? What should be kept/removed in the 2005 survey? What could the survey do to contribute to the Allston initiative in a useful way? If not a survey survey,, what else would you recommend to understand the customer in a way that would inform long range planning in Allston (you might start by focusing on the three issues on p. 10 of the case, and then think more mo re broadly).

“Not worth $50,000”? •

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Survey is too long and boring. Too many factual questions. They should be b e retrieved from somewhere else using the Student ID number n umber.. Self-selection bias: people who elect to respond the survey sur vey are positively pre-disposed towards Harvard real-estate services. Some questions were hard to answer (trade-off questions in section F) The survey makes simplistic assumptions about what drives satisfaction (e.g., location and features features,, instead of more sophisticated human factors). factors). It is not open-ended and fails to create a space where consumers could voice their aspirations. Will prove useless to address the org organizational anizational goal of defeating the private market.

“yes it’s worth $50,000” •

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Survey is thorough. Survey focuses on straightforward data that are reliable even though they are self-reported. Careful process integrating results with focus groups for better understanding. rewarding journey Experienced as a rewarding  journey through through my my housing experience. experience. responses . Very large number of responses. Segmentation/cross-tabulation of results by graduate school interesting and useful for action. Replicable over the years for monitoring. A good signal that the administration cares. Harvard now has at least some numbers where there were none before. Simple but useful insights into what students value most (e.g., apartment size secondary as compared to location and price).

What Makes a Survey Successful?

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Statistical concerns: 1. Presence of biases 2. Response rate Experience of the respondent:

3. Realism (vocabulary used, attributes evoked) 4. Structure (presence of an introduction, structure that matches the chronology of the consumer’ consumer ’s experience, location of factual questions, etc.) 5. Incentives to complete the survey 6. Likely impact on the satisfaction of the respondent

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Decision value for the manager:

7. Opportunities to uncover implicit structures through correlation analyses (in this case: correlations between graduate school belonging and housing ho using preferences). preferences). 8. Production of simple surprising (“stunning”) statistics 9. Connectedness with manager’s goals. 10. Ability to compare and monitor data over time

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Compatibility between the researcher and the respondent’s respondent’s language and ways of thinking. Perception of reward attached to responding to the survey: s urvey: upfront incentives, thanking, making the questionnaire que stionnaire interesting with a storyline (self-examination value). Reduce participation costs : contain length, allow for selfadministration administra tion at leisure l eisure and at home. Trust: don’t ask questions that might beg the response • • • • •

“why do you ask?”, stay on topic, promise to share results. Don’t ask questions that clearly are not genuinely intended to inform you. Have the survey sponsored by a legitimate authority

How to Write Good Questions?

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If you currently live in Harvard housing, do you think that coordinating living arrangements with a privately-owned housing renter would be more or less difficult than with HRES? [more/less]

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If you currently live in Harvard housing, what has been the singlemost frustrating aspect of your housing experience thus far? [open-ended; to appear close to the beginning of the survey]

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How do you rate the level of o f interactivity and active social/academic life of students within your current housing? [scale of 1-5]

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How do you think the design de sign and lay-out of your current housing contribute to this answer? [1-5]

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I would be in favour of designating a portion of on-campus housing as guaranteed on-campus housing for first-year graduate students. This means that students in these apartments would have to move out at the end of the year. [scale of 1-5]

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What changes/improvements changes/improvements would you lik like e to see made to the HRES lottery process? [open-ended]

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Overall, how would you rate your housing experience at Harvard? [significantly below expectations - below expectations - meet expectations exceeds exc eeds expectations - exceeds expectations substantially]

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Please rate your overall experience with this survey. [choose one on scale: extremely negative –  negative  negative –  neutral  neutral –  positive  positive extremely positive]

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Rank the following attributes in order of providing you a sense of

"community": Diversity of grad school representation, shops nearby nearby,, athletic/rec facilities, community space, comfort/modernity of apartments, safety. [multiple choice, ranking]

What Are the Limits of Survey Research?