I got an email today from Peanut Labs about an interesting story in Research Magazine. Forrester recently wrote a report about the panel quality issue and is very optimistic about two products that will machine fingerprint survey takers.
Technically this will eliminate anonymity and it should be possible to know how many times someone takes a survey, how many surveys they take per month, and even how many panels they belong to.
My first question is what took so long. This technology isn’t so new, upon request we’ve been able to capture and even block competitors IP’s for years now in survey research, but its nice to see someone finally leverage this to try to solve the sample quality issue.
Now its all up to the customers/end clients. Will they actually request this new tool to be used? If they do then panel/sample prices should go up tremendously as professional survey takers cease to exist. Will end clients be willing to do this??? My guess is probably not (if their current lack of interest in panel choice is any indicator).
Secondly, with professional respondents gone, who will take the 45 minute surveys some researchers like to field? First of all let me say I think anyone who tries to field a 45 minute survey, only to reduce the data later with factor analysis, should be ashamed to call themselves a researcher. If you know what you are doing you should be able to design a good 15 minute segmentation survey. However, some consultants and end clients seem to think volume of data is more impressive than quality of data. This may be one of the best possible outcomes from this new technology, that no one will ever again be able to field a 45+ minute survey.
Well sounds like it will be in the hands of the clients to decide. It would be nice to know the data is perfectly clean, I’m not holding my breath though.
-Tom
4 responses so far ↓
1 Olivier // Jun 5, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Hi Tom,
Why did it take so long? Well, it didn’t really.
Some companies like OTX have had similar tools to dedupe sample and managed past participation across sample sources for years. The truth is that this isn’t so hard to develop yourself, as you say yourself. What is new is that agencies who haven’t such a tool are now able to license it from third parties. However, what is currently missing from any solution offered is a shared database of professional survey takers. On the one hand, no one wants one company like OTX or Peanut Labs or MarketTools to control the entire sample market, on the other hand those tools get only better with more users. I believe this is why there has been and will always be a strong resistance from the market until such a central registry/database (managed by a neutral third party or professional organization) exists. I’ll say more on this later…
Your second point is probably the most important critical. Why are there professional respondents in the first place? Because normal people don’t want to take those horrible 45 minute surveys. Because even 15 minutes is too long for most people. This fight is going to be the most challenging, but exciting one.
2 Ali // Jun 6, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Olivier,
I agree. Glad to be working with you on OpenSample
Tom - this will help reduce professional survey takers, but the 45 min surveys will be a challenge. Habits take long to change and they’ve been ingrained for decades.
It’ll be interesting to see which way this goes over the next couple of years.
3 Murti // Jun 6, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Thats an insightful post Tom. We’ve actually found a good number of end clients and researchers supporting the idea and the solution. Check out this article:
http://www.mrweb.com/drno/news8405.htm
On another note, i’d love to link our blogs. Ours is at:
http://blog.peanutlabs.com
Best,
Murti
CEO, Peanut Labs
4 That John Martin » Blog Archive » New panel quality tools // Jun 10, 2008 at 1:52 am
[…] Anderson reports on some of the new panel quality tools from Peanut Labs and MarketTools and lays down the gauntlet on unreasonably long […]
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