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Panel Management
A panel is a living organism. It must be cultivated and nurtured to survive and flourish.
All of Decision Analyst’s online panels (including
custom client panels) are actively managed and nurtured “communities,” not just databases.
We heavily invest in systems and processes that ensure our panels are valid
and reliable so we can ensure our data and recommendations are valid and reliable.
Panel Membership
- All of Decision Analyst’s panels are double opt-in.
- All Decision Analyst panels are used exclusively for marketing research, except the Imaginators® panel, which is used for ideation and innovation projects.
- All of our panel members are paid for each survey. The longer the survey, the greater the incentive is. For screeners, panelist names are entered into a drawing for $10,000 in monthly cash giveaways.
Recruiting
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Respondents are recruited by a variety of media and methods: mail, phone, radio, television, magazines, newspapers, and the Internet. Publicity is an important component of recruiting efforts, and continuous advertising on over 1,000 different websites is a major source of new panelists.
Privacy Policies
- Each panel has its own privacy policy. These privacy policies,
in general, promise panelists that their answers to surveys will
be anonymous and confidential, that the results will be used only
for research purposes, that their names and personal information
will not be shared with or used by any other organization or
party, and that they will be paid for every survey.
The policies also state that Decision Analyst will adhere
to all laws and regulations of governmental entities,
including COPPA and HIPPA. Decision Analyst was the first
U.S. research company to qualify for certification under
the Safe Harbour Agreement between the U.S. and the European
Union, and remains a party to that agreement.
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All panels are compliant with ESOMAR and CASRO standards and regulations.
Panel Management
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Icion® panel tracking software monitors members’ participation in surveys, and inactive members are deleted from the panels.
- Panel members have complete control of their membership accounts and can log in at any time to update, modify, or delete their information. After completing surveys, panelists are asked to review and update their membership accounts. Additionally, all members of each panel are asked to update their membership accounts once a year.
- Our panels are screened periodically for product/service usage, covering such topics as car ownership and type, shopping habits, eating-out habits, beverages used, pet ownership, medical ailments, and credit cards owned.
- Panel members have restrictions on how often they can be contacted. No panel member can take more than two surveys per month (once a panelist takes a survey, he/she is excluded for two weeks from all other samples). Our typical panel member takes three to five surveys per year.
- Once the target audience for a survey is determined, a sample is pulled to represent that audience. Samples are defined and pulled via Icion®, our multivariate sampling software. Samples are balanced by geographic region, county size, and target demographics. Within each cell of the sample, respondent selection is random.
- Decision Analyst carefully tracks surveys by topic/category. Panelists who participate in a study on a particular product category are automatically excluded for six months from participating in a study for the same category.
Fraud Protection
- Our panels are rigorously and continuously cleaned by computer systems looking for registration errors, duplicate registrations, false information during registration, etc.
- Screening questionnaires and survey questionnaires contain “traps” to catch cheaters and sloppy respondents, who are deleted from our panels.
- As open-end questions in surveys are coded, respondents who appear to be cheating and/or answering questions in a haphazard manner are deleted from the study and from our panels.
- During the tabulation process, a series of quality-assurance processes are employed to look for suspicious responses (straight-line answers, taking the survey too quickly, inconsistent answers,etc.). Problem respondents are deleted from the study and from our panels.
- For the specialty panels (such as Physicians Advisory Council® and Executive Advisory Board®, etc.) each panel member’s occupation is verified.
- A database of “cheaters” is maintained, so that these individuals will be prevented from registering to become a member of any Decision Analyst panel again.
Deployment
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Once a questionnaire is finalized, an online project can be programmed and ready to launch in 24 to 48 hours. The typical project takes two to four days to launch (from the final questionnaire). Much of this time is spent on quality-
assurance processes and procedures.
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All samples are randomized, divided into multiple batches, and then launched and monitored by batch. Reminder emails are sent to nonresponders within each batch on the third day. Samples are controlled by geographic area, time zone, and response rate to ensure a nationally representative sample.
Additional Resources From Decision Analyst
If you would like more information on Online Research, please contact
Jerry W. Thomas by email
or call 1.800.ANALYSIS (262.5974).
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