Transcript Document
New Dimensions of Quality in Online Panels
Jacqueline Lorch
Vice President, Global Knowledge Management
Survey Sampling International
The World Is Moving On…
Why Does It Matter?
Questionnaire Design
Fieldwork
Sampling
Interpretation
What Are The Key Quality Elements?
A broadly-recruited, representative, well-managed pool of
respondents
Respondents who respond honestly and conscientiously:
What guarantees are there to guard against bad data, i.e. respondent cheating or
not concentrating/caring in their responses… ?
A well-designed survey instrument
How Do Respondents Fit In?
Google
“Market Research”
464 million entries
“Market Research Respondents”
2 million entries
What Is A ‘Professional Respondent’?
Some assumptions:
Quality of responses will be lower
Motivated to maximize incentives, not by intrinsic
interest
Do too many surveys – become conditioned
But what definition?
Someone who gets paid?
Honesty Is The Issue
“I am an IT Director with 7 wives…”
New Typology Of “Bad” Respondents
Hyperactive Respondents
Too many surveys, too many panels
Fraudulent Respondents
Misrepresent themselves
Inattentive Respondents
Don’t put thought into answers
Conditioned Respondents
Have learned from past surveys
Smith and Hofma Brown, Harris Interactive
Hyperactive Respondents
Do busy panelists provide bad data?
Do the most responsive panelists take
the surveys the fastest?
Are the fastest surveys the ‘worst’?
Hyperactive Respondents
US SurveySpot panel, 3 month internal tracker
Two groups:
– SurveySpot only
– One or more other panels
No difference in average time taken by each group
Similar answers on motivation for joining:
Motivated by chance to influence decisions
– SurveySpot-only: 50%
– More than one panel membership: 47%
Fraudulent Respondents
How can you tell if someone is who they say they are?
How can you stop multiple panel memberships using different
identities?
How can you tell if someone is just making up the answers?
Who Are You Today?
Ask me something only I
would/should know…..
Catch The Cheat…
Respondents…
Who have 23 different ailments
Who report using non-existent brands
Whose education doesn’t match their profession
Inattentive Respondents
Fatigue leads them to skip
questions
Don’t pay attention to
instructions
May be inevitable after a
certain length of survey
Inattentive Respondents
Related to interview length
Length of interview, minutes
14
19
21
Items
15
5
15
Skipped all
5%
8%
11%
5% baseline of inattention?
Respondents Speak Out
Repetitive questions “sorry this survey was just too long.”
“Sometimes it becomes so repetitive you say, ‘to hell with it, I
don’t need this.’”
“You think you are about done
and the same questions start
all over again.”
Inattentive Respondents
Time use > 7300 hours = 4 hours of sleep a night
Time use > 8760 hours = no sleep, ever.. more hours than in a year
Length of interview, minutes
14
19
21
>7300 hours
5%
6%
6%
>8760 hours
3%
4%
4%
5% baseline of inattention?
A really tough question set?
Respondents Speak Out
“…absolutely ridiculous… [questions like] ‘if this
pizza was a person.’ ”
“Why is this bottled water like your favorite pet?”
“In filling out this survey it asked when I would buy a new house. I
said “never”. The next several questions were regarding my new
house and it required an answer…So I quit the survey and didn’t
finish it.”
Conditioned Respondents
Only give the answers they
do because of what they
have learned from previous
surveys
Or change behavior as a
result of information from
surveys
Have no redeeming features
But do such people exist…..?
TNS Experiment
3 groups of respondents
High frequency – interviewed 5 times (1.2.3.4.5)
Medium frequency – interviewed 3 times (1.3.5)
Low frequency – interviewed 2 times (1.5)
+ Control group at wave 5
Same questionnaire
Survey frequency not yet released by TNS
UK, France, Germany
n = 1202 (control = 1470)
Product Usage
High
Low
Product Purchase
High
Low
Brand Awareness
High
Low
Conditioned Respondents
Evidence is hard to find
Maybe surveys aren’t quite so important to
respondents as they are to researchers!
Could we be over-reacting and losing
good respondents?
Respondents Speak Out
“I would like to know why it is that practically every time I give my age
I am refused the access to the survey? Is there something wrong with
being 75 and in good health, mentally and physically?”
Why do I spend 10 minutes answering questions on one of your
surveys before I am given message ‘Sorry, you didn't qualify for this
survey’.
“I have not been able to take several [most] surveys because I work in
the grocery industry. I don’t think it is fair. I AM A CONSUMER TOO …
It is not like I work for a company that makes or sells one brand.”
Respondents Speak Out
“…ability of the human eyes to see fonts of microscopic size. What’s
with this survey? The font size was like .002.”
“I said yes before; why are you going back and asking me the same
question.”
“Right to the point”…“if they say it’s 5 minutes, it’s 5 minutes.”
“By and large ask sensible questions in a straightforward way.”
What Needs To Happen?
Partnership…common terms and definitions
Avoid red herrings
We are not in the business of supplying bad panelists
Survey design is critical
We can’t do it alone