All the panellists must read and accept first the Terms & Condi- tions. Physically clicking and accepting them.
All the recruitment campaigns are evaluated at the supplier level after each recruitment wave. All the panellists are re-evaluated after 3 months for each supplier in order to understand, among other: Return rate, Attrition, Real cost.
Recruitment is targeted in order to increase the balanced part of the panel, the part of the panel that is national representative.
Q3 Is the same set of data recorded for each panel member?
What is the minimum number of existing characteristics?
<MR COMPANY NAME> recruitment questionnaires are both on the Household and Individual level. All the socio- demographic information is mandatory for the members on the household level and Name, Gender, Age, Occupation and Educa- tion are mandatory for all the registered Individuals. All <MR COMPANY NAME> panel members are registered with the minimum set of the following characteristics:
x Full Name x Gender x Region
x Age (day/year of birth)
x Postal code + house number (for validity checks and re- moval of duplicates)
x Household size x Occupation x Education x Income
x Head of the household x Main shopper
Q4 Is dudupplliiccaattiioonn avoided before the persons concerned are added to the sampling frame as panel members?
All the panellists receive a unique password on the staging wave (after recruitment). It’s not possible to enter any survey without having the password.
There are no duplicates of email address in the panel database.
All the duplicates are removed in the cleaning wave (after re- cruitment).
Q5 Are requirements made concerning the response of a panel member within a certain period, in order for him/her to be regarded as an ‘active’ panel member?
All the panellists are invited each month to at least a survey (screening survey) to update the information or to screen out people. Each panellist must answer at least 1 survey per year in order to be regarded as an active panellist.
Q6 How frequently are panel members approached for research in a certain time frame?
There are clear rules and selection mechanisms in the Sampling software that <MR COMPANY NAME> is using regarding the frequency of panellists’ selection to be invited to different surveys.
Invitations: Max one invitation every 5th day
Completed interviews: Max one per week (on average less than 1 interview / month)
Completed interviews same category: Max one per month
Completed interviews same category & same type of survey:
Max one per quarter
Q7 How is the sample created? Each panel member must have the same chance to participate in the study. How does the agency set up the survey?
<MR COMPANY NAME> uses Samplix, one of the most pow- erful Sampling software specially designed for panel sampling.
The Sampling algorithm gives equal chance to be chosen for each panellist. Only the selected panellists in Samplix receive an email invitation letter.
When a sample is pulled certain strict rules must be followed:
x the panellist’s occupation/sector of activity must be other than: Market research, Advertising, Media, etc.;
x the panellist should not have participated to a similar sur- vey in the last 3 months;
x the panellist should not have participated to more than 5 surveys in the past quarter, etc.
Q8 Is there any danger that the answers given by respondents to questions in the survey may be influenced by participation in earlier surveys? How are “professional respondents” ex- cluded from the survey?
<MR COMPANY NAME> has clear procedure established to discover the “professional respondents”. First set of procedure is applied in the recruitment stage (we are looking to the IP and the time entry). The second set of procedure applies different statisti- cal analysis for the history surveys (check if the answers from the same panellists are consistent). When a survey is launched, the access is allowed only once for the same ID & password.
Q9 What is the response rate on a project by project level and on the panel in general. How does an agency measure and moni- tor non-response rates and completion rates?
<MR COMPANY NAME> have implemented KPIs (Key Per- formance Indicators) for Access Panels in order to evaluate and keep tracking of Access Panels overall quality.
General indicators are:
x Number of emails send to members
x Number of panel members who opened the questionnaire x How many panel members Screened out
x How many panel members Dropped out
x How many panel members Completed the survey x In-depth analysis of completion rate:
x How many panel members Completed the survey / type of survey
x How many panel members Completed the survey / ques- tionnaire length
x How many panel members Completed the survey / value of incentives
x How many panel members Completed the survey by period of the year
<MR COMPANY NAME> offer an average response rate of 45%, and can offer the client a transparent response rate analysis.
Q10 How often is the panel purged and what purging rules are applied.
If a panellist have not answered to 5 consecutive surveys in a pe- riod of time of 3 months, they are automatically excluded from the panel.
Q11 How often is the information updated?
All panellists are updated at least once a year on the main vari- ables that we have for each panel member. For specific panel en- richment questions, such as brand ownership, the freshness of the data is indicated as the date when this information was collected.
This due to the reason that the freshness of the data for car own- ership can be different compared to FMCG products used.
Q12 Are panel members rewarded for their participation in the surveys? If yes, how does the panel organization implement the incentives plan and how is the relationship with panel members maintained?
The panel members are rewarded through a complex incentive plan, built on both a point system, were they can use the points earned to buy products from Amazon.com and through a tailor made and targeted incentive plan based on donations, lottery tickets (where this is legal and suitable), as well as other incen- tives such as spa weekends, digital cameras etc, based on the need of the survey.
Q13 How is the relationship with panel members maintained?
<MR COMPANY NAME> answers to all the panellists within 24 hours in the panellist language. Only exception in Finland, where the answer is given in 48 hours, but an automatically email is sent within 24 hours announcing the panellists that he/she will receive an answer in short term.
A newsletter is sent to the panel every month, among other offer- ing answer to some of the questions they have answered, mainly questions from the screening survey.
Q14 Does the access panel serve exclusively as a sampling frame for market research or are panel members also deployed for other activities?
<MR COMPANY NAME> panel is only involved in market re- search activities.
Q15 Does the panel adhere to all demands of the applicable legal obligations of governmental and industry bodies?
x Privacy Legislation x Tax legislation x Lottery legislation x ESOMAR guidelines
<MR COMPANY NAME> adhere to all the previous regulations.
Q16 Has the panel an ISO Certification?
The <MR COMPANY NAME> panel has been honoured with the ISO certification since 2003 and is the only ISO certificated panel on the market.