In finance, a “NET” is an amount minus expenses or fees; In research reporting, a “NET” is an amount minus duplicates. In many cases, a NET will be shown for the combination of responses to a particular question (like, “Top-3 Box”, where there are no duplicates and it’s simply a sum of responses) or for a combination of sentiments (like, in the case of an open-ended question, someone may express multiple sentiments in the same response which can all be counted separately, but would only count once when showing a NET of similar responses).

Nominal indicates that a data type is grouping things into categories, where one category isn’t higher or lower than any other, they’re just identifiers (like, hair color or zip code). Variable type: Named

Normal distribution, also called a Gaussian distribution or Bell Curve, is the most common distribution function for independent, randomly generated variables. This normalized distribution helps statisticians calculate the probability of observing any randomly generated value with the distribution. Values that appear close to the center of a Normal Distribution are very common and considered statistically similar. Values that appear at either extreme of the Normal Distribution (or on the “tails” of the Bell Curve) are far less common and considered statistically different from the other values.

NPS stands for “Net Promoter Score” and is intended to go beyond “satisfaction” and determine what percentage of respondents would actively speak out on behalf of the product/service/company (or “promote” them), if asked. It is a calculation that was developed by Satmetrix and uses an 11 point scale (0-10). Those providing a rating of 9 or 10 are deemed “Promoters”, those providing a rating of 7 or 8 are “Passives”, and those providing a rating of 0-6 are “Detractors”. The score is calculated by subtracting the % of Detractors from the % of Passives.

OE stands for “Open Ends” and indicates an unstructured free-form response to a question.

Ordinal is also a category grouping, but these categories have a clear order (like, Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good, and Excellent). What we don’t know, however, is how much distance is between these categories — how different is “Good” from “Very Good”? Variable type: Named + Ordered

Outliers are respondents or data points that are drastically different from the typical range of responses or values, thus skewing what we calculate to be “true.” Outliers are typically removed from the calculations to better-represent the data. (For example, when calculating MEAN income, if most responses are between $20k and $80k, but you have one or two respondents with $300 Million, the MEAN value calculated will drastically misrepresent the data. In this case, we could either exclude the outliers and re-calculate the MEAN or calculate the MEDIAN instead, so as not to be influenced by the outliers.)

Panel refers to a large group of people who have pre-agreed to participate in research studies.

Primary research is essentially “new” research. It’s research and information that doesn’t already exist and needs to be conducted.

Qualitative research relies on data obtained by the researcher from first-hand observation, interviews, discussions, participant-observation, documents, and artifacts. The data are generally non-numerical, have smaller sample sizes than quantitative studies, and the focus tends to be a deeper understanding of a topic or experience. A few common examples include focus groups, Indepth interviews, and ethnographies.