Marketing Research Glossary - H

Habeas Headers: A hidden header put on emails to notify Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that the emails are legitimate and not spam. Decision Analyst subscribes to Habeas so that its survey invitations always reach panelists (that is, Decision Analyst's emails are never blocked by ISPs). Without Habeas protection, emails can be blocked by ISPs, and this can distort the sample for a survey.

Halo Effect: A type of human bias. For example, if a famous football quarterback later had a son, coaches might perceive his son to be a great quarterback (even if he's not). The father's reputation created a halo effect for the son.

Head Of Household: A term no longer used by the U.S. Census Bureau (although often used in the research industry). The Census's new term is "householder." The householder is the person who is asked to complete the census questionnaire. Typically, the head of household would be the husband (the male head of household) and his wife (the female head of household), or the individuals who fulfill these roles. The head of household, supposedly, is the primary decision maker, although this notion is often not true. The composition of households can be quite varied, and the U.S. Census Bureau should be consulted for detailed and current definitions.

Hedonic Scale: A scale to measure how much people like a product or service.

Hermeneutic Research: Research that focuses on interpretation through conversations.

Heterogeneous Market: A diverse market consisting of many different cultures and people.

Heteroscedasticity: In regression analysis, the condition of nonconstant variance among error terms. Can serve to erroneously classify insignificant variables as significant.

Hierarchical Bayes Model: A modeling method that uses Bayesean statistical techniques. Hierarchical Bayes models are called hierarchical because they have two levels of analyses, each with its own distributional assumptions, the lower level being conditioned on the higher. These models use information from all individuals' choices together to yield unique parameters for each individual. Learn More

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act): Enacted in the U.S. in 1996, the act includes among its provisions, requirements for the security and privacy of an individual's health data. Researchers conducting surveys on health-related topics must be familiar with these data privacy requirements.

History: Things that happen, or outside variables that change, between the beginning and end of an experiment. See also Maturation.

Hit Rate: In general, the hit rate is a ratio or proportion. Think of hit rate as the "success rate" in reaching a target population.

Holistic Test: A test that focuses participants' attention on a product or concept as a whole (in contrast to a Atomistic Test that looks at the individual elements of a product or concept).

Home-Usage Test (HUT): A type of research where respondents are given a product to use in their homes as they normally would. Reactions to the product are collected in a follow-up survey. Also called In-Home Usage Test (IHUT). Learn More

Homogeneous Groups: Groups that tend to be very similar in makeup or composition.

Homoscedasticity: In regression analysis, the condition of constant variance among error terms.

Honorarium: The payment provided to survey respondents or focus group participants. The amount varies based on the difficulty of recruiting the participants and the length of the interview or session. Also called the Co-Op Payment or Incentive.

Hostess: A term referring to the individuals who are responsible for greeting and taking care of focus group respondents and observers. Hostess' responsibilities include serving food to the participants and the client observers, rescreening respondents when they arrive, preparing name tags, etc.

Household: All persons who occupy a housing unit, as defined by the Census Bureau.

Householder: As defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, the person, or one of the people, in whose name the home is owned, being bought, or rented.

Housing Unit: A house, apartment, group of rooms, or a single room occupied as separate living quarters.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): A set of tags used to mark text files, including files that create hyperlinks to other documents on the Internet.

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol): The Web communications protocol that sets rules for how information is passed between the server and the browser.

HTTP Cookie: See Cookie.

Humanistic Inquiry: A research method in which the researcher is immersed in the system or group under study.

HUT (Home-Usage Test): A test product is provided for participants to use at home. Reactions to the test product are determined in a follow-up telephone survey, online survey, or in-person interview. Learn More

Hypotheses: Theories about the possible causes of some change in a marketing variable.

Hypothesis Test Of Proportions: Test to determine whether the difference between sample proportions is greater than would be expected because of sampling error, given equal population proportions.

Hypothesis Testing: A statistical procedure used for discriminating between two statistical hypotheses—the Null Hypothesis and the Alternative Hypothesis. Also called Significance Testing.

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