Getting Some Help with Panel Research

A research panel consists of a group of people selected to take part in your study. Typically, panel groups represent a sample of your target population. Panel research studies are interesting because they are essentially a three-month-long project condensed into a couple of weeks. This can be fun, but it can also be hectic. It quickly becomes apparent if data collection is suffering. You have less time and need to invest more money in order to fix the problem.

Choosing a panel research partner

The best way to avoid spending too much time and money (or sanity) is to have a good panel research partner from the get-go. Entrusting a list of four to five different companies you prefer to work with can make the bidding process flow quickly. Having preset expectations for each company reduces the likelihood of getting unexpected surprises.

At PortMA, some of our most trusted panels for market research projects include:
–Prodege
–Lucid
–Dynata
–Cint

What to watch for during the bidding process

The bidding process can be an effective way to see the early warning signs of panel research becoming a struggle. The obvious top-level concern is if multiple vendors come to say that they won’t be able to deliver on your expectations. If you find that your regular vendors are struggling to hit your target, you can work around this by sourcing from multiple vendors. Should you chose to do this, however, always make sure to inform those vendors.

This will help to prevent them from using the same sample should they bring in outside partners. If you have one company that says they can deliver your complete sample size, despite multiple others saying they cannot, you should advance cautiously. Vendors commonly share many of the same or similar sources for panelists, so one group having a strikingly large amount compared to others might be a potential red flag. PortMA’s trusted vendors (listed above) do an excellent job of being transparent about this.

Make sure to follow up with each supplier to try and determine how they have the resources to complete your sample size. Sometimes, suppliers will have special lists that happen to match your goals. As a general rule, when looking at bids, we recommend cutting 10% from any delivered sample size. This lets you take into account any bad data and still have a robust base.

Data quality checks in panel results

All panel research surveys are going to contain some bad data. Typically, it’s people who simply rush through the entire survey and give absurd answers. Other times, it’s a result of people taking the survey multiple times. If this is something you want to know more about, read our post on ensuring the integrity of your online panel data.