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Market Research Definitions

Head of Household:
An outdated term of the U.S. Census Bureau. Householder, the new term, is the person who completes the Census Questionnaire.

Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act:
HIPAA provides the requirements for security and privacy of health data. Before conducting health care research become familiar with HIPAA.

Hedonic Scale:
A scale for measuring general, overall opinion of a product.

Heteroscedasticity:
In regression analysis the condition of nonconstant variance.

History:
Changes that occur between the beginning and end of an experiment.

Homogeneous Groups:
Groups in which the units or individuals have extremely similar characteristics.

Homoscedasticity:
In regression analysis it is the condition of constant variance.

Honorarium:
The incentive for focus group participants. The amount can vary depending upon on the difficulty of recruiting the participants.

Hostess:
The individual responsible for welcoming the focus group participants and for preparing the focus group room. The hostess also provides food for the participants and the client observers, and re-screening respondents.

House to House Distribution:
Delivery of goods or literature to the consumer's front door or mailbox.

Household:
All persons who occupy a housing unit.

Householder:
This is the person in whose name the home is owned or rented, or the individual that completed the survey or interview. The U.S. Census Bureau defines the householder as the person who completed the Census Questionnaire.

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

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

Hypothesis Test of Proportions:
Test to determine whether the difference between proportions is greater than would be expected because of sampling error.