Voice is the most intuitive, natural and efficient way to communicate. It’s also an emotional microscope. So with increasing volumes of research data being captured through recorded audio and video, it can be a source of valuable insight. The award winning Phebi platform goes beyond what people say, illuminating how they felt when they said it and translating that emotional response into data that can be analysed for greater insight. ​The combination of analysis of both emotion data (from the ‘tonal analysis’ of the respondent’s vocal characteristics) and the ability to visualise this data gra ..read more

Guest Blog: Tim Brandwood, codeit I am delighted to announce the launch of our automated theme discovery tool, themeit. themeit harnesses the latest generative AI technology (think Chat GPT) to supercharge your verbatim coding process. How does it work? Once you’ve loaded some data into codeit, you can access the new themeit tool by clicking “analyze themes”. themeit will then auto analyze your data, extract a set of suggested themes and code as many of your verbatims as possible.  Once this is complete, you can view the results in a simple and easy to use visualisation. You c ..read more

Guest Blog: Tim Brandwood, codeit As researchers, we understand the value of asking open-ended questions in our surveys. They help us get to the “why” that lies behind the closed questions you ask. It’s no use finding out that your customers are dissatisfied if you don’t also ask them why. The challenge with collecting this kind of free-text data is that it usually needs to be measured. For example, what are the top five most frequent reasons your customers are dissatisfied? How does that trend over time? And so on . . . Turning qualitative data into quantitative measures usually involves co ..read more

One of the most enjoyable aspects of my role is engaging with clients in person and gaining insight into how they utilise Askia. I am constantly amazed by the ingenuity of our users and the resourceful ways they optimise their survey businesses with our platform. A recent visit to Warwick to meet with Consumer Insight provided a shining example of this. We were discussing the thorny issue of survey fraud and data quality with Craig Meikle and Jack Wood. I was relaying some of the excellent information that has been shared on this topic at the recent ASC Conference at the Oval last month. If yo ..read more

Testing a survey thoroughly before it goes into field is an absolutely critical part of running a research project. Askia is therefore delighted to introduce a really useful option when testing a survey, whereby vital “back-end” information is displayed for the benefit of the survey testing team. With this new Survey Testing Information option switched on, the name of the question shortcut is shown, as are the response entry codes. Perhaps most valuable of all, any response that has survey routing behind it, has the ability to show the routing logic that has been set by the scriptwriter. This ..read more

What I do . . . I define the vision of where the Askia software range is going. I also fix bugs in the code I wrote 20 years ago. My proudest work achievement . . . Founding Askia with Patrick and making it a home for so long for so many of my colleagues. It does sound paternalistic, but I can live with that. My even more paternalistic achievement is to be the father of four boys – two of them I am not related to biologically – and I tell you that’s work! If I wasn’t working for Askia, I would probably be . . . I’d like to think I’d be a game programmer, but more likely I’d be writing Cobol fo ..read more

‘Filtered Weighting’ is an exciting new feature recently added to AskiaAnalyse. It removes the need for manual intervention when implementing certain weighting requirements. Probably the best way to explain the feature is to show you a working example, so I’ve put together a five-minute video demonstration of the new feature which can be viewed below. In the example, the requirement is to equally weight all but one of the responses of a question. The remaining response is to be left unweighted i.e. its observed percentage does not change before and after applying the weighting. In the video ..read more

What I do . . . I’m one of the Support Engineers at Askia. I assist our clients with a variety of technical topics, including (but not limited to) survey script writing, survey design, fielding setup, software installations, data exports, data analysis, etc. I also assist Askia and our clients with technical training, database management, and server maintenance. I wear many hats. My proudest work achievement . . . Due to a combination of luck, brute force, and experience, I’ve solved several “needle in a haystack” installation issues that I’m quite proud of. If I wasn’t working for Askia, I w ..read more

Those clever people at MyForce have launched a new version of their BISON Recording Management Tool. We think that many Askia call centre managers and supervisors will be thrilled to find out that managing quality control can be made so much easier. A great deal of effort has been made to develop a time-saving tool that is both user-friendly and powerful. CATI Supervisor Software Call Centre managers already using the CTArchitect dialler alongside the Askia CATI solution will know about the increases in their call centre’s efficiency when using the two systems together. For example, the extens ..read more

What I do . . . Most of my career I have done HR and employee relations, but these past few years my focus has been more on key account management and office administration.  This has not been a career change, but I must admit that I am enjoying it very much! My proudest work achievement . . . To continue to have an amazing working relationship with my team and our US-based clients – it’s been almost eight years now.   If I wasn’t working for Askia, I would be . . . Volunteering in Africa or the Caribbean. The best advice I ever received was . . . Treat others the way you w ..read more