Trends Report

Professional Survey Takers: Still A Threat!

How To Reduce Corruption Risk From Voracious Online Survey Takers

January 22nd, 2008
Brad Bortner, null
Brad Bortner
With contributors:
April Lawson , Ellen Daley

Summary

Professional survey takers (PSTs) are the potential Achilles' heel of the online panel industry. This issue was thrust into the awareness of the market research community almost three years ago when comScore indicated that its behavioral tracking panel showed that some major panels had 30% of their surveys being taken by less than 1% of their panelists. Almost three years later, Forrester retested the depth of this problem by surveying 4,913 consumers using an offline panel. This gives us a view into these panelists' offline and online survey behaviors. The result is that the PST problem is alive and well and that demographic data does little to identify who is likely to be a PST but that the problem can be greatly reduced by identifying panelists who claim to belong to more than three panels and screening them out of your research upfront.

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