What Would You Share??

Fraud, as you probably know by now, is a major problem in online survey research. In the case of many online survey panels, all it takes to join is an email address, and then you answer a bunch of profile questions, which you are expected to answer honestly. In the case of a US consumer panel, the intent is to restrict panelists to those located in the United States. At the most permissive end of the spectrum, you might simply be asked, “Which country do you live in?” A slightly more restrictive panel might check your IP address, though it’s easy to get around this check too by using a proxy or VPN. At Survey Diem, we require panelists to scan a valid ID document, typically a driver’s license.

A few other good approaches are popping up in survey world, and a new question is not just “will this approach prevent fraud” but also, “to what extent are we getting a representative sample?” Because some people will be okay with doing X to join a panel, while others may only do Y, and I thought it would be interesting to see which steps you, reader, would be comfortable with yourself. So here’s a poll! Please take it, and we’ll discuss the results in a later post.

For the purposes of this poll, assume you are interested in joining a survey panel so that you can get paid to take surveys.

Actually, let’s start at a higher level..

Ok, so having answered the question above, now assume that you were interested in joining a survey panel.

Because Substack’s poll function is too basic for a checkbox question, please answer the next poll question here:

https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8893027/Whiskey-Tango-Research-Bot-Reader-Poll-1

I can’t wait to see what you say. Be sure to pass this along to friends so they can weigh in as well. I am genuinely very curious about this and, like I said, I’ll follow up in a few weeks to let you know what the results are and what they mean for the industry.

Cheers and thanks for reading.

-CW