Panel Rental Guidelines
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Thu, Jan 14, 2010
When conducting an online survey, the alternative to e-mail list rental is to purchase external sample from a third-party provider such as e-Rewards, SSI, Greenfield Online or any one of dozens of panel providers. Third-party panel providers recruit individuals who meet a wide variety of demographic and firmographic criteria and obtain permission from them to participate in surveys. In exchange for providing detailed information about themselves and participating in targeted surveys, panel members earn cash and other rewards over a period of time.
When renting external sample, you must define your specific demographic/firmographic criteria and then get bids from third-party panel providers for obtaining the specified number of responses you require.
Panel providers will charge a per-respondent fee for access to the panel members and, like e-mail list owners, will distribute the survey link on your behalf. They will invite panel members to participate in your survey until you receive the total number of responses you need for your study. When you contract with the sample provider, the number of responses you get is guaranteed. The panel company will continue to send invitations out to their panel members until you receive the total number of responses you need. When you utilize external sample to obtain results, you pay the panel provider a fee for every completed survey. Prices range from as little as $10 per complete for a general consumer audience to potentially hundreds of dollars per complete for highly specialized respondents such as physicians, IT managers or other hard-to-get demographic groups.
While it is more expensive to use external sample rather than rented e-mail lists, using a reputable third-party panel provider virtually guarantees that you will receive the number of responses you want for your study. When using rented e-mail lists there are no guarantees that anyone will respond to your request to participate in your survey.
As with email lists, please keep in mind that most research conducted using third-party panels is qualitative (indicative rather than representative); because respondents were not selected randomly from a target population, you cannot extrapolate to a wider audience. The panel companies will try to convince you that their results are representative, but they are fooling themselves. See Sample Quality of Online Panels: Putting the Lipstick on the Piggy Bank for more detail.
When you rent access panels for surveys, what factors do you consider when selecting a vendor?