Why is the data quality in some panels so low?

Simply said, with some large international panels, participants are flooded with multiple survey invitations every day but receive just a few cents for each survey. After a while, those participants a) become survey professionalized and b) develop a fugitive and speedy response behaviour.

a) Survey Professionals
With the ways to many invitations the respondents become "survey professionals" with the special ability to "qualify" for each and every survey. They do so by answering the usual screening questions at the start of the surveys purely tactical, but not truthfully anymore. The result is, that within samples from some large international panels the participants do not really have the required target group attributes, but only pretend to have them.


b) Fugitive Responding
In addition, the trend is that some panels exploit the participants: Incentives are just tiny credits of a few cents are granted in return for filling out half an hour long surveys (or only raffle tickets). And in spite of that, collected amounts expire periodically before payout is possible. At some point members of those panels realize that they are exploited and the panel response drops. Remaining participants compensate by clicking through more surveys in shorter time. Obviously they can only do so by reading hastily or even stop reading the questions altogether and instead simply click some nice looking patterns.

In fact those panels breed "survey professionals" answering screenings tactically and then bluntly click through main surveys as fast as they can without giving consideration to survey topics. The data quality that derives from commissioning those mass panels is in accordance to how they treat their respondents.

Why is the data quality from our panel considerably higher?

First of all, we are a small panel and do not have the chance to send our respondents that many survey invitations as some mass panels do. To keep the respondents motivated with fewer invitations, we have to grant them fair and reasonable incentives for each survey. That avoids professionalization and keeps up response quality.

But the good panel response and the excellent quality of our panelists' answers are also the result of a mix of sustainable care for our panelists and a rigorous quality control:

Sustainable panel care:
We work only with our own panel: No sample brokerage, no river sampling! We grant our panel members appropriate and fair compensation and reliable payout and motivate them to answer carefully and elaborately in return. Accumulated credits do not expire and are reliably paid out. Even participants who do not qualify receive a (smaller) incentive for their efforts. Our participants know us as a serious and fair online research panel and have a positive and trustful attitude towards us and the surveys we present them. Because we are a comparatively small panel provider, our participants are not flooded with daily survey invitations, instead receive just 1-2 invitations per month. This way we prevent breeding "survey professionals" (see above).

Surveillance:
Other than many competitors, we do not use PayPal or Amazon vouchers for payout. Instead the one and only way for our respondents to receive a payout is by way of a bank wire transfer to an existing bank account. Since opening a personal bank account requires an identity proof by a passport or identity card, multiple payouts to the same bank account become obvious and those respondents are blocked. Thus, our respondents are not "virtual", but instead are real persons with real bank accounts and verifiable identity. Moreover, by standard we provide all customers with really easy to use links in order to report us interviews with bad data quality. The advantage for the customers is that they do not need to pay those bad interviews. The advantage for us is that we can score respondents for quality, and we systematically block participants who caused bad quality interviews. in the long run only those participants remain with our panel, who constantly deliver fine quality data.

Taken together, the quality of our data is considerably higher than with a lot of other panels.

Stop using mass processing by large international panel giants and sometimes receiving sloppy data. Come to us and receive high quality panel services from an owner-operated reasonably sized fieldwork company from Germany that has been in the market for 10 years. Test it and send us an email with an RFQ: You receive a quick, friendly, honest and competent reply.