When Should Psychographic Weights Be Used When Running MRI Data?
For the most part, psychographic weighting is already built into MRI psychographic runs and do not need to be added. There are two exceptions, however; psychographic weights should be used when crosstabulating VALS or LifeMatrix data. Here’s a bit of background on the evolution of MRI’s in-built psychographic weights. When MRI began to include psychographics in The Survey of the American Consumer, separate weights were created for each psychographic battery and subscribers were encouraged to use the correct weight for each particular psychographic run. (“Weighting” lets researchers project survey data to the total U.S. population.) As more psychographic batteries were incorporated, however, the number of weights became excessive and problems sometimes surfaced, such as: • Clients often used incorrect weights which resulted in incorrect analyses; • Percentages did not always add up to 100 since not all respondents complete all items within a psychographic battery; • The potential for di
