28 Questions to Help Research Buyers of Online Sample
Welcome to the 2insights ESOMAR 28 Questions. The primary aim of these 28 Questions is to increase transparency and raise awareness of the key issues for researchers to consider when deciding whether an online sampling approach is fit for their purpose. Put another way, the aim is to help researchers to ensure that what they receive meets their expectations. The questions are also designed to introduce consistent terminology for providers to state how they maintain quality, to enable buyers to compare the services of different sample suppliers. Notes on the context of the questions explain why the questions should be asked and which issues researchers should expect to be covered in the answer.
It should be noted that these 28 Questions focus on the questions that need to be asked by those buying online samples. If the sample provider is also hosting the data collection, you will need to ask additional questions to ensure that your project is carried out in a way that satisfies your quality requirements.
The questions do not cover B2B samples, nor do they attempt to cover specific requirements for different types of research such as pricing, new product development, ad testing etc.
For supplemental information, ESOMAR (www.esomar.org) provides a Guideline for Online Research that addresses best practices in handling ethical, methodological, and regulatory issues, and the legalities regarding technology in research.
Company Profile:
Q1. What experience does your company have in providing online samples for market research?
2insights Research is one of the most trusted research company for both our Clients and our Panellist. 2insights Research has been delivering full research fieldwork solutions for all sectors which includes pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing research projects for the past 8 years. Our panel is used for both online Quantitative and Qualitative market research efforts.
All panels accessed via the 2insights platform are operated in compliance with accepted industry codes, including, but not limited to ESOMAR and AQR.
Approximately 70+ markets around the world in addition to all the major developed markets, 2insights also delivered services and projects to clients in markets where digital market research is less prevalent like Mongolia, CLMV, Iceland, Moldova, and few central Asian countries.
2insights’s clients also get access to niche target groups in many geographies that are not commonly found in other sample providers. These include rare disease patients, sports fans, Parents of children of specific ages, certain ethnicities, Migrants like Burmese in Thailand rural areas, audiences, professionals, health care providers and many others.
Sample Sources and Recruitment:
Q2. Please describe and explain the type(s) of online sample sources from which you get respondents. Are these databases? Actively managed research panels? Direct marketing lists? Social networks? Web intercept (also known as river) samples?
All panels within our platform are only used for market research and when participants/panellists register, they are informed that the panel is used exclusively for market research purposes.
Some of the recruitment methods used by panel partners include
- Social networks like Facebook, WhatsApp etc
- Loyalty web sites
- Affiliate traffic
- Telephone-based recruitment which also includes telegram in Central Asia.
- Face-to-face (F2F) based recruitment
- Online recruitment through the owner’s portal which includes: (1) brand communities and (2) digital media and publisher sources
- Email recruitment through a panel owner’s newsletters
- Email recruitment using a permission-based database
- Face-to-face (F2F) based recruitment
All participants/panellists available through the Cint platform are subjected to comprehensive quality checks to ensure clients get the highest quality outcomes.
Q3. If you provide samples from more than one source: How are the different sample sources blended to ensure validity? How can this be replicated over time to provide reliability? How do you deal with the possibility of duplication of respondents across sources?
For most of the surveys, 2insight uses direct invites sent to its panellist but for surveys where partners are used, IP duplication checks is implemented so the respondent from single IP can’t take the survey again. This ensures that common panellist of partner and our panellist do not enter the survey twice and are restricted before entering the survey.
2insights Research’s samples are recruited through different methods and sources, so all the respondents are profiled and verified before being invited to any of the market research survey.
We employ Geo-IP check, browser cookie and few other acceptable digital fingerprinting technologies to de-dupe sample.
Instant quality checks during recruitment and after completion of the survey though various parameters help us determine and exclude peculiar respondent from the study as well as from the panel.
Q4. Are your sample source(s) used solely for market research? If not, what other purposes are they used for?
2insights uses its panel solely for research purposes. Under no circumstances do we send or allow our clients to send advertisements to our panel members or use our sample for direct marketing.
Q5. How do you source groups that may be hard to reach on the internet?
We obtain our sample from standard core sources mentioned previously, as well as utilize our multimode recruitment practices, in order to maximize sample from hard-to-reach groups such as Healthcare Professionals (HCP).
We have adopted many offline and focused recruitment methods. For example, we heavily rely on our probability sample CATI and FTF survey projects for recruitment purposes. At the end of each probability sample interview, particularly those conducted in hard to reach areas and/or population, we invite the respondent to join our panel. More than 26% of our current panel is comprised of people who have been recruited in this way. We also design our recruitment campaigns to target difficult to reach population by using recruitment sources that are closest to such populations and utilize tailored campaigns that is most likely to attract them.
Q6. If, on a particular project, you need to supplement your sample(s) with sample(s) from other providers, how do you select those partners? Is it your policy to notify a client in advance when using a third party provider?
2insights offering is based on our expertise at maximising sample, by blending proprietary and third-party access. We are very clear with our clients about how we intend to source the respondents for a specific project and make it clear when we intend to use third party sample.
Third party suppliers are selected based on their willingness to adhere to set of quality and management process which are monitored through stringent guidelines for every project commissioned.
Sampling and Project Management:
Q7. What steps do you take to achieve a representative sample of the target population?
For client-based surveys, a sample is drawn at random from our panel members, who meet the screening criteria (if any) for the client’s study.
Once assigned to a survey, members receive a notification on email either on their business or personal email if using their own PC. The email notification alerts them that there is a new survey available to take and contains a unique link for that individual to start the survey. Email reminders are sent to unresponsive members. If email does not generate a response, a second reminder is initiated. The usual protocol is to wait at least three days and between reminders.
2insights Research also operates an ongoing incentive program to encourage participation and create member loyalty.
Sample is drawn according to the specifications of the study. Sample can then be deployed in batches/replicates if required. This is controlled by the operations group, who has responsibility for all survey assignments. The sample deployment procedure is flexible enough to accommodate batches/ replicates, time zone as well as geographic staggering.
Q8. Do you employ a Survey router?
We do not employ a survey router as this is not suitable for high level B2B and Healthcare Professional sample.
Q9. If you use a router, please describe the allocation process within your router. How do you consider which surveys might be considered for a respondent? On what priority basis are respondents allocated surveys?
2insights Research does not employ survey router.
Q10. If you use a router; What measures do you take to guard against or mitigate any bias arising from employing a router? How do you measure and report any bias?
Not applicable
Q11. If you use a router; What measures do you take to guard against or mitigate any bias arising from employing a router? How do you measure and report any bias?
Not applicable
Q12.What profiling data is held on respondents? How is it done? How does this differ across sample sources? How is it kept up to date? If no relevant profiling data is held, how are low incidence projects dealt with?
Full demographic and buyer behaviour profiles are collected. In addition, we also collect profile information on employment, autos, technology and media consumption, gaming, ailments, CPG use, travel & leisure activities, mobile devices, mobile browsing, and mobile operating systems.
Profiles are available for always updating to our members. We actively request that members update their profiles when any changes occur in their lives. We also send them a yearly reminder on their birthday to update their profiles. We leverage on research profiling survey as a quality scoring mechanism for most of our active panellists. For Web Intercept respondents we ensure that we are able to verify their identity through our third-party partner and that we have the ability to re-contact them on an as needed basis. In addition, we make best efforts to empanel all Web Intercept respondents.
Q13. Please describe your survey invitation process. What is the proposition that people are offered to take part in individual surveys? What information about the project itself is given in the process? Apart from direct invitations to specific surveys (or to a router), what other means of invitation to surveys are respondents exposed to? You should note that not all invitations to participate take the form of emails.
Panellists are invited to participate via email and telephonic invitations. They are told the Survey Length, Reward Offered, Sweepstakes Entry Information and one to two sentence descriptions of the survey they will partake in. In addition to individual survey invites, we have begun testing a Daily Digest for some of our panels where the panellists receive one email a day listing all the available survey opportunities at that moment.
Finally, panellists can login to their accounts at any time and view all available surveys on their member dashboards.
Q14. Please describe the incentives that respondents are offered for taking part in your surveys. How does this differ by sample source, by interview length, by respondent characteristics?
Our panellists have the opportunity to choose between redeeming their earned cash rewards for Amazon.com gift codes, Dining Dough Gift Certificates or placing the funds on a Pioneer MasterCard Debit Card.
For verified doctors and medical professionals on our Physicians Round Table panel, we offer the choice of Swift MasterCard Debit Card or PayPal as the reward option. Incentive amounts are adjusted based on survey length and target audience. Higher value panellists including IT, B2B, and minorities generally receive a higher incentive to maximize response.
Q15. What information about a project do you need in order to give an accurate estimate of feasibility using your own resources?
We ask that when clients reach out to us for estimates of feasibility that they provide:
- Target Group
- Survey Length (LOI)
- Regions covered
- Age and gender requirements
- Mobile friendliness
- Incidence among targeted demographics (IR)
- Screening criteria and Desired Budget
16. Do you measure respondent satisfaction? Is this information made available to clients?
Part of the validation process for all panellists was to take a brief over-the-phone survey asking them what they liked and disliked about our panel, which competitor survey panels they preferred better, and what we could do to improve. We consistently look at the panellist feedback and implement changes. Inquiries from panellists are responded to within 24 hours.
Q17. What information do you provide to debrief your client after the project has finished?
This varies from project to project and is dependent on the needs of the client.
If requested, we can provide the following:
· Number of deployed email invitations
· Average survey completion time
· Email invitations click-thru rate
· Actual incidence
Other details can be shared on request.
Data Quality and Validation:
Q18. Who is responsible for data quality checks? If it is you, do you have in place procedures to reduce or eliminate undesired within survey behaviours, such as (a) random responding, (b) Illogical or inconsistent responding, (c) overuse of item non-response (e.g. “Don’t Know”) or (d) speeding (too rapid survey completion)? Please describe these procedures.
Data quality is performed by our operations team. We have daily reports which are published and distributed to the team that reflect the new members who have joined in the last 24 hours.
These reports provide detailed information on the new member’s registration behaviour and if they have completed the SMS validation. New members email addresses are also screened through the Verify protocol to confirm validity.
The daily reports also provide information on the new member’s account and demographic profile information to be reviewed for discrepancies and/or potential fraudulent data. During the profiling process within our router, we present various fraud traps to the responder to validate that their responses are consistent with previous captured data and are not fraudulent.
Once a member is matched to a survey, our systems will:
1) Present Pre-Screening Captcha’s
2) Perform speeder detection checks to determine if a survey has been completed too quickly.
3) When hosting surveys on behalf of our clients, we also program various quality and answer consistency questions to allow us to identify responders who answer illogically or inconsistently.
Finally, we review and validate survey responses. When we are the sample provider and not providing survey programming services, we often receive response feedback from our clients which also helps us determine the quality of answers provided by our users. When evaluating responses, we evaluate whether the response is random or not, if the response is inconsistent, or if certain answers have been overused.
Once a member is marked as fraud they are not invited to additional surveys, and they are blocked from registering multiple accounts. We believe our fraud protection is among the best and most sophisticated in the industry. It is a constant battle to stay one step ahead of new technology and the fraudulent and professional survey takers that attempt to corrupt our industry.
Q19. How often can the same individual be contacted to take part in a survey within a specified period whether they respond to the contact or not? How does this vary across your sample sources?
We do not limit the number of invitations a panellist can receive; however, active panellists receive an average of five survey invitations per month. We keep full records on panellist activity including survey starts, survey completes, rewards earned, rewards cashed out, support tickets and much more.
Any respondents that come from Web Intercept sources are given a unique token that follows them throughout their entire survey taking experience with our organization, therefore we are able to keep similar counts on Web Intercept respondents and the number of surveys they take.
Q20. How often can the same individual take part in a survey within a specified period? How does this vary across your sample sources? How do you manage this within categories and/or time periods?
We have capabilities to control to whom invitations are sent based on previous studies they have completed, and within whatever time frame is specified. We also provide the facility of customizing past participation rule according to client requirements. We also provide filters based on category, survey, time and any profile or system data point.
Q21. Do you maintain individual level data such as recent participation history, date of entry, source, etc., on your survey respondents? Are you able to supply your client with a project analysis of such individual level data?
Yes, all our respondents’ data is stored separately in our database. We provide this data to the client on individual requests.
Q22. Do you have a confirmation of respondent identity procedure? Do you have procedures to detect fraudulent respondents? Please describe these procedures as they are implemented at sample source registration and/or at the point of entry to a survey or router. If you offer B2B samples, what are the procedures there, if any?
2insights Research’s panel management team leverage technological approach for quality respondent management.
Several quality control measures are employed for a high-quality survey output and participant identity confirmations to ensure our panellists are real and genuine like:
- Geo-IP validation and proxy detection.
- Duplicate email and contact details verification
- Double-opt in email confirmation at the time of registration
- Digital fingerprinting and using web cookies for duplicate device detection
- Speedsters and straight liners are identified and removed from the survey and panel
We keep a track of fraudulent users and blacklist them from ever entering any 2insights Research’s online survey.
Policies and Compliance:
Q23. Please describe the ‘opt-in for market research’ processes for all your online sample sources.
2insights Research uses a double opt-in process for all respondents and all prospect panellists are required to completes a panel registration form, which includes a set of screening and profiling questions like business titles, detailed demographic and geographic information, auto ownership, ailments, product ownerships, travel, shopping habits, and employer profile.
After completion of the recruitment questionnaire, panellist receives an email which needs to be confirmed by them (double-opt-in-process) as their willingness to join the panel and an acknowledgement of our Terms and Privacy Policy.
Q24. Please provide a link to your Privacy Policy. How is your Privacy Policy provided to your respondents?
We comply with local laws for data protection as well as the research standards and guidelines and strive to confirm our privacy practices to applicable laws standards including associations like Insight Associations and ESOMAR.
Since the GDPR guidelines have gone into effect, we also ask our members to read and actively accept our privacy policy as we’ve made improvements to the way we collect and use private information.
2insights Research’s privacy policy is available at the below link:
https://2insights.com/privacy-policy/
Q25. Please describe the measures you take to ensure data protection and data security.
All panellists and client information’s are stored and secured via industry standard firewalls and stringent IT security policies. Access is restricted and requires authorization. Access to participant data is restricted by password and secured in a separate server. We adhere to strict guidelines and high security measures are taken when it comes to physical and logical security of panellist and client data.
Q26. What practices do you follow to decide whether online research should be used to present commercially sensitive client data or materials to survey respondents?
It is required that panellists agree to our privacy policy and other terms and conditions at the time of registration in order to become a panellist and receive survey invitations as per their profile and demography.
All panellists are informed at the time of joining the panel that they may be presented/shown confidential and sensitive material in the terms & conditions, and they are asked to agree not to share any concepts that they are shown in surveys they participate.
Also all respondents are asked to give their formal agreement to a confidential statement before the start of the surveys and additionally some technical barriers can be implemented which protects the sensitive material from getting copied by disabling copy and save functions and immediately blacklisting respondents from the survey if he/she tries to use copy/PrtScr functions.
Q27. Are you certified to any specific quality system? If so, which one(s)?
2insights adheres to several international guidelines for Market Research including, ESOMAR, AQR and EphMRA.
Q28. Do you conduct online surveys with children and young people? If so, do you adhere to the standards that ESOMAR provides? What other rules or standards, for example COPPA in the United States, do you comply with?
We follow country-specific and local regulations to ensure that we are compliant with regional legislation and privacy laws when it comes to interviewing young people and children, like we adhere to all COPPA regulations and so we do not interview children under the age of 13 in US. In cases where we need to interview minors, we recruit them only through their parents and no personal information is stored