Harvard Graduate Student

Housing Survey
Harvard Business School Case

Prof. Prem P. Dewani, Ph.D.

Faculty Marketing: IIM Lucknow
 Lead Questions
1 Go through the survey questionnaire in
Exhibit 1 as a respondent. Reflect on your
experience

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 Lead Questions
o1
o What are your feelings, thoughts (e.g., what images come to your
mind?) and emotions as you go along?
o What makes you want to stop, what drives you to continue?
o What is easy to answer, what is difficult?
o What are the merits of this questionnaire?
o What are apparent shortcomings?

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 Lead Questions
2 Reflect on your own experience with housing
as a graduate student.

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 Lead Questions
3 Is there an important aspect of
experience that was not captured by the
2001 survey?

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 Lead Questions
4 Write a question (or a block of questions) that
should be added to the survey to capture that
aspect that might impact decision making.

Specify the format of the answer to your question

(e.g., a five point scale).

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 Lead Questions
5 Predict the average answer(s) to your
question(s) and the impact on actual decision
making it might have.

Try to achieve professionalism in your

wordings.

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 Lead Questions
6 When looking back at the 2001 survey,
what news did it produce, what impact did it
have?

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 Lead Questions
7 Can you attribute this impact to specific
features of the survey or of the survey design
process and circumstances?

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 Lead Questions
8 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, 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
broadly).

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 Objective of the Case
Identifying potential contributions of surveys
and marketing research in organizations.

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 Objective of the Case
Learning in context the steps necessary to develop,
design, write, and implement a successful
questionnaire, and effective ways to analyse and
present the resulting data.

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 Objective of the Case
Gaining an appreciation of contemporary
challenges associated with survey research.
• How to structure and write engaging self-administered
questionnaires,
• How to leverage the Internet,
• How to create surveys that contribute to enhancing and
maintaining customer relationships.

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Data Collection Techniques: A Comparison
Criteria Mail / Internet Telephone Personal
Direct Panel In home Shop Intercept
Sample Character
Sample representativeness -- + - ++ +
Control Characteristics
Control of Environment -- -- - + ++
Interviewer control ++ ++ + -- +
Data Characteristics
Data quantity + + - ++ +
Data diversity -- -- - ++ ++
Data completeness - - ++ ++ ++
Opportunity for clarification - - + ++ ++
Interviewer bias ++ ++ + -- -
Non response bias - - + - ++ ++
Social desirability bias ++ ++ + -- --
Order effect bias -- -- + + +
Process characteristics
Flexibility -- -- + ++ ++
Speed ? ? ++ + ++
Cost ++ + - --- -
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 Objective of the Case
Learning specific technical aspects related to the
measurement of critical parameters such as price
sensitivity and attribute importance.

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 Objective of the Case
Improving the skill of writing good survey
questions.

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1 “yes it’s worth $50,000”

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2 “yes it’s worth $50,000”

Survey is thorough.
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 3 “yes it’s worth $50,000”

Survey focuses on straightforward data that are

reliable even though they are self-reported.
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 4 “yes it’s worth $50,000”

Careful process integrating results with focus

groups for better understanding.
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 5 “yes it’s worth $50,000”

Experienced as a rewarding journey through my

housing experience.
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6 “yes it’s worth $50,000”

Very large number of responses.

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 7 “yes it’s worth $50,000”

Segmentation/cross-tabulation of results by
graduate school interesting and useful for action.
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8 “yes it’s worth $50,000”

Replicable over the years for monitoring.

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9 “yes it’s worth $50,000”

A good signal that the administration cares.

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 10 “yes it’s worth $50,000”

Harvard now has at least some numbers where

there were none before.
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 “yes it’s worth $50,000”
11

Simple but useful insights into what students

value most (e.g., apartment size secondary as
compared to location and price).
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 “NOT worth $50,000”
1

Survey is too long and boring.

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 “NOT worth $50,000”
2

Too many factual questions. They should be

retrieved from somewhere else using the Student
ID number.
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 “NOT worth $50,000”
3

Self-selection bias: people who elect to respond

the survey are positively pre-disposed towards
Harvard real-estate services.
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 “NOT worth $50,000”
4

Some questions were hard to answer (trade-off

questions in section F)

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 “NOT worth $50,000”
5

The survey makes simplistic assumptions about

what drives satisfaction (e.g., location and features,
instead of more sophisticated human factors).
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 “NOT worth $50,000”
6

It is not open-ended and fails to create a space

where consumers could voice their aspirations.

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 “NOT worth $50,000”
7

Will prove useless to address the organizational

goal of defeating the private market.

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What Makes a Survey Successful?

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A Statistical concerns:
1. Presence of biases
2. Response rate

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B
Experience of the respondent:
3. Realism (vocabulary used, attributes evoked)
4. Structure (presence of an introduction, structure
that matches the chronology of the consumer’s
experience, location of factual questions, etc.)

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B Experience of the respondent:
5. Incentives to complete the survey
6. Likely impact on the satisfaction of the
respondent

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 B
7. Opportunities to uncover implicit structures through
correlation analyses (in this case: correlations between
graduate school belonging and housing preferences).

8. Production of simple surprising (“stunning”) statistics

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 Decision value for the manager:

B
9. Connectedness with manager’s goals.

10. Ability to compare and monitor data over time

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C
Compatibility between the researcher and the
respondent’s language and ways of thinking.

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D
Perception of reward attached to responding to the
survey: upfront incentives, thanking, making the
questionnaire interesting with a storyline (self-
examination value).

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E
Reduce participation costs: contain length, allow for
self-administration at leisure and at home.

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 F
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

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 How to Write Good Questions?

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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 How to Write Good Questions?

If you currently live in Harvard housing, what has been

the single-most frustrating aspect of your housing
experience thus far?
[open-ended; to appear close to the beginning of the
survey]

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 How to Write Good Questions?

How do you rate the level of interactivity and active

social/academic life of students within your current
housing?
[scale of 1-5]

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 How to Write Good Questions?

How do you think the design and lay-out of your

current housing contribute to this answer?
[1-5]

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 How to Write Good Questions?

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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 How to Write Good Questions?

What changes/improvements would you like to see

made to the HRES lottery process?
[open-ended]

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 How to Write Good Questions?

Overall, how would you rate your housing experience

at Harvard?
[significantly below expectations - below expectations - meet
expectations -exceeds expectations - exceeds expectations
substantially]

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 How to Write Good Questions?

Please rate your overall experience with this survey.

[choose one on scale: extremely negative – negative – neutral –
positive -extremely positive]

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 How to Write Good Questions?

Rank the following attributes in order of providing you a

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

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What Are the Limits of Survey Research?

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 Queries??

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 Take Away From Case

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 The TruEarth Healthy Foods:
Market Research For A New Product
Introduction
Harvard Business School Case

Prem P. Dewani, Ph.D.

Marketing Professor IIM Lucknow
Prof. Prem Prakash Dewani
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