Collaborate With Stanford Researchers on Attitudes

Professor Jon Krosnick (Stanford University, Departments of Communication, Political Science, and Psychology) and Ellen Konar (Stanford University, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences) invite applications from graduate students enrolled in PhD programs in business programs or in the social and behavioral sciences to collaborate with them in conducting analyses of data to assess the relative efficacy and validity of customer experience measures in predicting company performance and in writing up results for publication in academic journals.

About 10 years ago, companies looking to understand customer feedback were offered a simple tool that was billed as “The One Number You Need to Grow,” called the Net Promoter Score. Since then, this approach to measuring customer experience has caught on like wildfire across the US and around the world, being used in millions of surveys every year by thousands of companies. However, the design of the survey question used to yield the Net Promoter Score (NPS) has a variety of features that, according to the literature on questionnaire design, may be suboptimal. So perhaps the NPS can be significantly improved by redesign.  

Perhaps more importantly, very little empirical evidence exists testing the claim that the NPS is the most effective way to predict desired customer behavior as the frequency with which they recommend the company to others, their repeat purchase and the performance of the company.

This research project will involve the analysis of four existing large national survey datasets that experimentally deployed different versions of the NPS, in addition to its original form. The datasets are designed to permit analyses to determine which measures perform most effectively.

Dr. Krosnick and Dr. Konar seek to supplement their research team with a graduate student who is willing to commit at least 8 hours each week for up to 6 months to this collaboration, to be recognized by coauthorship  on one or more manuscripts to be published in academic journals. This could evolve into a paid position should one or more research grants be successful.

Interested applicants should send a resume with emphasis on quantitative research skills and copies of publications and unpublished manuscripts and a cover letter explaining their interest in this position to Jon Krosnick ([email protected]) and Ellen Konar ([email protected]). Applications will be considered on a rolling basis, and a selection will be made ideally by about January 20, 2015, or earlier.