Marketing Research Glossary - U
U&A Surveys: See Usage And Attitude Surveys.
Unaided Awareness: The proportion of people who are aware of (i.e., have seen or heard of) a product, brand name, company, or trademark without prompting.
Unbalanced Scale: A scale where the number of favorable and unfavorable categories is not equal. The scale “excellent,” “good,” “fair,” “poor,” for example, is unbalanced toward favorable answers, since it has only one negative answer.
Unbiased Estimator: An estimator whose sampling distribution has a mean equal to the parameter being estimated.
Unbiased Samples: Samples obtained from sample designs in which there is no bias and all sampling error comes from random sources.
UNCLE®: One of the tabulation software packages used by Decision Analyst.
Unforced Rating Scale: A scale that allows a neutral or no opinion choice.
UNICODE: See Double Byte. Logician®, Decision Analyst’s online survey software (for example) is programmed in UNICODE so that all languages can be easily displayed in Decision Analyst's international surveys.
Unidimensional Scaling: Procedures designed to measure only one attribute of a respondent or object.
Union: The event containing all simple events for both Event A and Event B. The concept of union can be extended to more than two events.
Unipolar: An ordinal scale with one positive end and one negative end.
Unit Of Analysis: The basic element on which the experiment or study is conducted or from which data are collected. Also known as the Respondent, Participant, Sample Unit, Subject, or Experimental Unit.
Univariate Data Set: A data set in which one measurement (variable) is recorded for each respondent.
Universe: The set of all the units from which a sample is drawn. Also called the Population.
Unlisted/Ex-Directory Households: Households that do not have a listed (or publicly published) telephone number. The number of homes with unlisted telephone numbers has steadily increased over the years.
Unstructured Data Set: Information that is not in a formal structured format, such as social media comments, open-ended comments in customer databases or surveys, etc.
Unstructured Observation: A research project in which an observer simply records and makes notes on the behavior of the person who is being observed. Observation is much more productive, however, if the purpose of the observation is manifest.
Unwillingness Error: Also called Omission Error. It occurs when a respondent, for whatever reason, fails to give a full and complete answer to a question.
Upload/Download: The transfer of electronic data between two computers or between a computer and a server. Uploading refers to the sending of data. Downloading refers to the receiving of data.
Urban Population: A term referring to people in the U.S. who live in towns or cities. The U.S. Census Bureau defines urban as a town, community, or city with at least 2,500 inhabitants. All population not in these urban areas is classified as Rural Population.
Urbanized Areas: A central city or cities and the surrounding (contiguous) geographic areas containing smaller cities and towns.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator): An Internet address, as well as a standard method of naming files on the web. A URL begins with a protocol name (such as http), followed by a colon and two forward slashes (//). Next comes the name of the internet server that the file is stored on, followed by directories that hold the file, each separated by forward slashes (/). The file name comes last, as shown in the following example: http://www.decisionanalyst.com/services
U.S. Census-Balanced Panel: An online panel balanced to U.S. Census data on age, gender, income, and other demographic variables.
Usage & Attitude Surveys (U&A): Surveys designed to measure consumers' awareness of various products/brands, the usage or consumption of those products/brands, and related attitudes and perceptions.
User Image: The impression created, either explicitly or implicitly, about the type of person who is likely to be a user of a brand. User images can be defined demographically by life stage, lifestyle, or attitude.
USP (Unique Selling Point, Or Unique Selling Proposition): The benefit or advantage that differentiates one brand from its competitors.
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