The Benefits of Using the Tool for Multi Wave Analysis

We are always trying to deliver updates and developments to the tool to make the user experience as seamless as possible. Performing multi-wave or trend analysis is one of the key strengths of the GlobalWebIndex tool, especially when compared to other analysis tools.

Some of the more traditional research and analysis tools struggle with multi-wave data, and in particular, with analysing questions where new options have been added in specific waves. In this situation, one would normally have to manually weight the each line of data to match fields that have been run in single waves versus multi waves, and every analysis would need to be rebuilt for new wave files. This is a complicated and time consuming process. Because the tool works so well with multi-wave data this removes the need for any line by line weighting to ensure accurate results.

However, one difficultly that is often encountered is the unknowing creation of an audience using statements or variables not in all GWI waves. Trying to run these audiences against a new question from GWI.7, for example, is impossible is the audience is created with a pre-GWI.7 variable. The other alternative was to cut back the statements to only show what is in current / all waves, however, we felt this was limiting the value of the data.

To help make this issue as clear as possible, we are adding a graph on the audience creation page, so you can visually check the wave distribution of data. We are also labelling the attitudinal statements, so you know which wave they were added. This will help you ensure at the audience creation stage that your audience will indeed be available for analysis in the waves for which you require. Furthermore, all universe weighting and percentages are calculated on a line by line basis, which means that you can accurately compare a new data point from GWI.7 to one in the same question that has been on all seven waves. This won’t always be obvious, but it’s deliberately so, making the analysis process much simpler

In an ever evolving and living product like GWI, it is inevitable that we will evolve questions by adding or dropping options, so the following is essential that our tool works with this in a different way to other tools.