The ESOMAR has published 26 questions designed to help research buyers of online samples (first published 2005 and revised 2008). We warmly welcome these questions and answer them to provide you with information about our Consumer-Opinon.com proprietary online panel, on what we do and how we do it.

26 ESOMAR QUESTIONS

COMPANY PROFILE

1. What experience does your company have with providing online samples for market research?
The proprietor has experience of more than 10 years in the field of offline and online recruitment and panel research (e.g. as "Manager" of the regio-representative MEB offline panel of IPSOS Deutschland and as a research consultant for the former MediaTransfer AG Netresearch & Consulting, now a subsidiary of Harris Interactive).

SAMPLE SOURCE

2. Please describe and explain the types of source(s) for the online sample that you provide (are these databases, actively managed panels, direct marketing lists, web intercept sampling, river sampling or other)?
Recruitment for our Online-Acess-Panel Consumer-Opinion.com takes place online and actively through broad recruitment channels (such as banners, newsletters, affiliate programs). We aim to generate as heterogeneous a panel structure as possible, as this corresponds best to the overall population. Membership requires a double opt in (filling in of a recruitment questionnaire and confirmation of membership by sending an activation email). Members have thereby actively agreed to become panel members and take part in market research projects.

3. What do you consider to be the primary advantage of your sample over other sample sources in the market place?
Firstly, we are an independent institute offering good value for money. We react rapidly and with high quality standards to the requirements of our clients and process their projects as if they were carrying out research using their own institutional panel.
Secondly, the identity of our panel participants is secured by the monetary incentive we offer for participation in a survey: For payout, panelists have to enter their unique bank account which identifies them as unique users.

4. If the sample source is a panel or database, is the panel or database used solely for market research? If not, please explain.
Respondent's personal data are not used for direct marketing or any other marketing activities, but used solely for market research.

5. How do you source groups that may be hard-to-reach on the internet?
We usually do not offer to provide such groups in lager numbers.

6. What are people told when they are recruited?
Our main claim for Consumer-Opinion.com is: "We want your opinion as an active consumer!".

PANEL RECRUITMENT

7. If the sample comes from a panel, what is your annual panel turnover/attrition/retention rate and how is it calculated?
Through continuous recruitment of consumers, our panel is growing on a long term basis. As our panel is relativley young, we we do not have statistics on turnover/attrition/retention rates yet and will provide them later.

8. Please describe the opt-in process.
At "Consumer-Opinion.com" participants can register for paid online surveys. We also have a double opt-in process with email verification.

9. Do you have a confirmation of identity procedure? Do you have procedures to detect fraudulent respondents at the time of registration with the panel? If so, please describe.
Because of the monetary incentive we offer, payment of incentives is conditional on submission of personal bank account details, i.e. an unambiguous, checked identity (an ID card must generally be submitted before a bank account can be opened). This prevents participants from registering multiple identities in the panel.

10. What profile data is kept on panel members? For how many members is this data collected and how often is this data updated?
A basic profile, which is mandatory in order to become an active member, includes only information on name, address, country, base language, age, gender and technical information (like IP or referrer). More specific topics, such as education, income, internet use or others, are kept in special profile datasets on demand. We integrate these special profile questions in our surveys whenever suitable or necessary. Thus, this information is always up to date.

11. What is the size and/or the capacity of the panel, based on active panel members on a given date? Can you provide an overview of active panelists by type of source?
Our panelbook, dated at July 2009, can be found here: consumer_fieldwork_en.pdf (see page 2). We also can do a panelist count, divided by country, age and gender, for you at any time. As our panel is constantly growing, please call us at +49 40/740 41 98 - 0 for further information.

PANEL AND SAMPLE MANAGEMENT

12. Please describe your sampling process including your exclusion procedures if applicable. Can samples be deployed as batches/replicates, by time zones, geography, etc? If so, how is this controlled?
We are able to exclude samples from a survey in various ways.

13. Explain how people are invited to take part in a survey. What does a typical invitation look like?
Invited panelists are told that they can take part in a survey, how long the questionnaire approximately takes and what exactly the incentives for that study will be. We think that open recruitment in email invitations (“we are looking for people with characteristic xyz”) exercises a problematic influence on participant selection. That’s why we don’t state criteria for participation and always query screening criteria covertly. Additionally, we always provide a link to our panel support participants can contact in case of any questions, and inform how to opt-out of the panel.

14. Please describe the nature of your incentive system(s). How does this vary by length of interview, respondent characteristics, or other factors you may consider?
Our panel members receive a monetary incentive for their truthful participation in a survey. The amount of the incentive depends on target group, length and difficulty of the survey and is stated in the invitation individually for each survey. Participants receive money as an incentive for participating in surveys. As a rough rule of thumb, € 0.20 per minute spent on the survey is considered appropriate. Thus a respondent would receive € 1.00 for a five minute interview. The incentives are paid into the bank account named by the participant after they have collected €10.

15. How often are individual members contacted for online surveys within a given time period? Do you keep data on panelist participation history and are limits placed on the frequency that members are contacted and asked to participate in a survey?
Our system provides sophisticated limits for the frequencies and time-periods, based on invitations and/or completed surveys, we regularly use to choose participants for surveys. From communications with our participants, we know that panellists generally want more rather than fewer surveys. Nevertheless, we do not ask our participants to take surveys too often or to repeatedly take part in surveys on the same topic.

POLICIES AND COMPLIANCE

16. Is there a privacy policy in place? If so, what does it state? Is the panel compliant with all regional, national and local laws with respect to privacy, data protection and children e.g. EU Safe Harbour, and COPPA in the US? What other research industry standards do you comply with e.g. ICC/ESOMAR International Code on Market and Social Research, CASRO guidelines etc.?
We treat our panelists data confidentially. We guarantee to observe the legal regulations of German data protection law, which is one of the strictest in Europe and the world.

17. What data protection/security measures do you have in place?
It is of the utmost importance to ensure the safety of data by various methods which we keep confidential for obvious reasons.

18. Do you apply a quality management system? Please describe it.
To ensure quality, we have systems in place which consists of:
• Best recruiting channels
• Secure identities through required bank account for incentive
• Double-Opt-In registration
• Reliable incentive program
• Constant check during online studies for consistent answers
• Reliable user helpdesk
• Manual exclusion of fraudulent responders from our panel by our panel management if necessary

19. Do you conduct online surveys with children and young people? If so, please describe the process for obtaining permission.
We do not allow people under 14 years to join our panel.

PARTNERSHIPS AND MULTIPLE PANEL MEMBERSHIP

20. Do you supplement your samples with samples from other providers? How do you select these partners? Is it your policy to notify a client in advance when using a third party provider? Do you de-duplicate the sample when using multiple sample providers?
In general, we do not supplement our samples with samples from other providers.

21. Do you have a policy regarding multi-panel membership? What efforts do you undertake to ensure that survey results are unbiased given that some individuals belong to multiple panels?
We usually do not use several panels for one project therefore we do not have this problem.

DATA QUALITY AND VALIDATION

22. What are likely survey start-rates, drop-out and participation rates in connection with a provided sample? How are these computed?
This is highly dependent on target group, incentives, length of interview, survey design, time for fieldwork, number of reminders etc. On average, the response rates are generally at 40% and can be as high as 85%. The numbers are automatically computed by our system.

DATA QUALITY AND VALIDATION

23. Do you maintain individual level data such as recent participation history, date of entry, source, etc. on your panelists? Are you able to supply your client with a per job analysis of such individual level data?
Yes, this information is stored and we are able to supply our clients with some information. Of course personal information of the respondents is protected.

24. Do you use data quality analysis and validation techniques to identify inattentive and fraudulent respondents? If yes, what techniques are used and at what point in the process are they applied?
The validity of respondent's data begins with the double opt-in method. In surveys we use tricky questions to identify inattentive respondents. The data-cleaning covers some statistical methods (including looking for patterns and speedsters), along with manually reading the open-end questions. We also validate our panelists via their bank account.

25. Do you measure respondent satisfaction?
Yes. Measuring and maintaining the satisfaction of our respondents is an integral part of our quality process: In most full interviews the last question is a small item-rating on respondent satisfaction plus an optional open end question on remarks.

26. What information do you provide to debrief your client after the project has finished?
Once a project is finished, on request we provide our clients with a field report containing detailed information on the project's performance data, such as number of invitations, starters, screenouts/quotafulls, dropouts and completes.