RESOURCES

Working With Us On
Psychometrics

Last Updated: Jan 1, 2025

 
OUR APPROACH: The 5 C's Of Psychometrics

Test Development Requires Continuous Partnership

Most assessment companies work on a one-off basis with their clients. We do not. We believe in partnering with our clients over longer periods of time. From our perspective, constructs and their measurement need to evolve continuously in today's changing world. As a result, we've structured our services to make long-term partnerships more cost-effective than one-off projects. This way, our clients can continuously ensure we're there to support them as changes are needed.

Test Development Requires Constant Iterations

Because constructs and their measurement need to evolve continuously, there will always be a need for updating, refining and validating your test. This means we will constantly be iterating. So working with us doesn't mean you see us once, and then never again. Hence our "continuous partnership" approach.

Test Development Requires Clear Constructs

You can't build a test without defining what you're measuring. To help you do this, we need to understand your priorities: Is this for credentialing marketers and brand managers, requiring maximum reliability? Or something flashy for new business? Are you measuring across diverse populations requiring careful attention to fairness? Your measurement objectives guide every methodological choice.

Test Development Requires Hard Choices

Every methodological decision in test development involves tradeoffs that affect validity. We take time to ensure our clients understand these implications. For instance, choosing between different item formats or scoring methods impacts what you can claim about the scores and how they should be interpreted.

Test Development Requires Hard Collaboration

While many clients would prefer a hands-off approach, quality test development requires ongoing collaboration between content experts, psychometricians, and stakeholders. You should expect regular consultation and review points throughout the development process.

Our Plans

Our plans allow for varying levels of measurement sophistication and automation.

Trial Plan

  • 2 workshops
  • Custom Measurement with 3 factors
  • Yearly updates to the measurement
  • 1 thought leadership paper
  • Basic Measuring Minds platform access
  • Included monthly research

Basic Plan

  • 3 workshops
  • Custom Measurement with 3 factors
  • Quarterly updates to the measurement
  • 2 thought leadership papers
  • Advanced Measuring Minds platform access
  • Included monthly research

Enhanced Plan

  • 4 workshops
  • Custom Measurement with 3 factors
  • Monthly updates to the measurement
  • 2 thought leadership papers
  • Enhanced Measuring Minds Platform access
  • Included monthly research

 

The above plan descriptions are an abbreviated summary of our existing plans. However, to fully understand the products and services included in each plan, you can see more about our plans here.

But What If I Need More Measures?

Your plan includes aa set frequency at which we'll revise the measurement for you. For example, for some, this can only happen yearly. For others, it can happen monthly. We get that sometimes your business may require you to revise your measure for a specific industry or use case (e.g., Ad Testing vs. Brand Management). However, these additional requests are unplanned, and therefore might conflict with current project schedules. So in an effort to balance incoming requests with other scheduled/planned projects, we may need to decline or charge for the extra research.
  • Measurement revisions above and beyond your plan's quota will be charged an additional fee, which you can find on our additional fee page here.

Our Project Timelines

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The Psychometric Research Project

(No Additional Fees Required)

For the standard project associated with our psychometric research plans, you should expect a 3-month timeline:

  • The Plan Phase - We develop a complete framework for your customized measure and how to sell it.
    • 4  weeks for the 4 workshops
  • The Proof Phase - We finalize your statistically validated 18-item measure for data collection.​
    • 1 week for survey writing
    • 1 week for survey programming
    • 1 week for data collection
    • 1 week for data analysis
    • 1 week for technical report
  • The Product Phase - We deliver your scoring methods, a client pitch deck, and a PR report for marketability.
    • 1 week for the proof paper
    • 2 weeks for additional materials
  • The Platform Phase - We set you up for success with your own measurement platform for consumer insights.
    • 1 week for platform set up and walk-through

Will Timelines Change?

Timelines Can Shift:

Please note that there ARE times in which these guidelines will change to include a LONGER timeline:

  • Workshop scheduling availability may impact project timelines.
  • If you have a sample that is hard to reach. This will increase the timeline.
  • If you're asking for custom analytics with the data. This will increase the timeline
  • If you need more time for reviewing survey docs/links, or you need time for other project "checkpoints". This will increase the timeline.

Project Deliverables

When you work with us, our process includes structured deliverables at the conclusion of each phase. Some deliverables are only available with specific plans.

Planning Phase

Psychometric Workshop 1 – The framework of your measure

Psychometrics Workshop 2 – Survey items for your measure​

Proof Workshop – An outline of your thought leadership papers​​

Product & Sales Workshop – An outline of your pitch deck​

Proof Phase

Proof Survey – A survey we'll use to collect data for your technical paper and PR paper​

Proof Survey Link  – The link survey respondents will receive

Final Measurement Items – What our initial analysis indicates as the best items to use for your measure

Product Phase

Formula Deck – A document showing how we calculate your brand scores​

Battlecard Deck - A document detailing the score breakdown of each of your brands​

Designed Technical Report - A report showing the validity and reliability of your measurement​

Pitch Deck - An example deck to show to clients about your measure​

Designed Proof Report - A white paper that highlights why your score is relevant to marketers​

Other Types of Research Projects

As a reminder, your plan includes your research services. We'll execute any study for you that includes your specific measure. Most often, this can be a creative test or a brand tracker.

However, we do a number of different projects for our clients that creatively include their specific brand measure. For example, some of the most popular methods we used in 2024 include: standard online surveys, store intercepts, focus groups, interviews, sensory testing, among others methods and techniques. Please note we do these types of projects and more. So if the need arises, do not hesitate to reach out and ask.

Client Communication

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Project Kick Off

For each of our clients, we schedule a 1 hour kick off call to discuss a new project. This time will be used for us to take you through a line of questions to get full information on a project. This will be condensed into a document we call "The MM Kick-Off Brief".  The goal of the Measuring Minds brief is to make sure we have all the information before going into a project, so we can craft the best quality deliverable for you.

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Workshops

For each client, we conduct four strategic workshops, each consisting of a one-hour session that prepares your go-to-market strategy. Each workshop is carefully designed to move from theoretical framework to market-ready measurement solution.

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Client Status Emails

For each of our clients, we send along a client status email every Monday morning. This email will provide you an update on each of your projects, along with any action items you need to take. This way, you can start off your week knowing where each project is and what Inkblot will be doing each week.

 

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Client Status Calls

For those clients that want it, we typically schedule a 30 minute status meeting on a weekly basis. Status calls allow us to make sure you know what stage your projects are in, as well as for us to talk about anything new that has happened in your business that allows us to focus on what data to capture or what survey to implement in the upcoming months.

 

Intellectual Property

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The Idea

Most of the time our clients come to us with an initial idea for a measurement (e.g., Brand Growth Scale).

We build this idea out into a framework through four workshops.

This framework includes:

  • 3 Factors (i.e., Business Growth, Consumer Growth, Cultural Growth),
  • Each factor has two facets (i.e., "Consumer Growth" might have the two facets: "Need Growth" and "Word of Mouth")

The idea and name of your scale (e.g., "Brand Growth Scale) is NOT owned by inkblot. 

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The Measure

This is the actual ~18-item survey that is used to measure the idea (e.g., the survey items that measure Brand Growth).

Inkblot owns the survey items that compose the measurement. This is primarily to avoid any kind of dispute between Inkblot and clients, or between two inkblot clients.

To make our client tools as powerful as possible, we have databases of survey questions that we have used across a number of brands and categories. From time to time, we might take survey questions that have historically performed exceptionally well and include it in a client measurement to improve the power of the client measurement. This might mean that one or two of the survey questions originally used by inkblot, could end up in the measurements of two different clients.

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The Platform

This is the Measuring Minds platform that we white label and customize to host a client's framework and measurements. 

  • Inkblot owns the Measuring Minds Product. This is licensed to you to use.
    • If you were to suggest we develop a new feature (e.g., emotion identification from facial expressions) we have a right to use that idea, and own that addition to the platform.
  • To be clear, if you woke up tomorrow and said "I want to use a new vendor", you could go white label someone else's platform for the your measure. You just couldn't have them build features similar to the current platform.
  • Additionally, if you woke up tomorrow and wanted to build your own platform for your measurement, you could. It just couldn't have features similar to Inkblot's platform.

To find out more about intellectual property in the context of our market research subscriptions, click on the button below.

See Our IP Rules

Are There Other Costs?

The biggest thing you need to know around costs is that sample services are not included in our monthly subscription fees. You can buy one of our sample services plans, or pay on a project-basis.

Outside of that, there are some additional requests not included in your service plan that require additional fees. You can find those additional fees on our website by clicking the button below.

See Other Costs