ONLINE PANELS — Background, Types, Advantages and Disadvantages
In this text, we will cover online panels, ie surveys that are done with specific groups of people over a period of time solely by email or the web.
We will point out the advantages and disadvantages of this type of survey and explain the process of conducting online surveys.
The term poll
Survey (french: questioning, research), organized questioning or gathering information on a political, social, economic or other issues, mood of public opinion, etc. Especially in sociology, psychology, journalism, etc., is a method of collecting empirical data on citizens’ views on different social phenomena.
It shows the time cross-section and the quantitative prevalence of the investigated phenomenon, most often based on the selected sample, for estimation applied to the whole population.
Online polls
The impact of new information technologies is evident today in all areas of research, and in particular how survey data are collected. Thus, online surveys, if properly conducted, have a significant advantage over other survey formats and are becoming increasingly popular.
At the same time, the disadvantages of this method of collecting survey data are numerous, and this technique of data collection is recommended only when it is really appropriate and to reduce the disadvantages.
The advantages of online surveys are that the aforementioned ways of completing the survey questionnaire can unify the procedures for collecting, entering, controlling and correcting data. In this way, the survey is made simple by the survey, which leads to rationalization, reduction of costs and improvement of the quality of individual processing and calculation of final results.
Online research into practice
To participate in online panels in Croatia and worldwide, you need to sign up for one of the web sites of the agencies that do the online surveys.
After logging in and registering, on a single page, you enter a group of respondents from which sampled individuals who fit the sample of a particular survey.
If you meet the requirements (gender, age, place of residence…) you enter a group of respondents (online panel) and get an e-mail link with which you can access a specific survey. For each completion of the survey, the respondent receives a reward (points), which, after a certain number of points collected, he can exchange for prizes (voucher, money, donations, subscriptions…).
Some sites offer rewards if a respondent brings a new member to their site.
The advantages of working with e-mail are that each member has a unique IP address that can be used to control, to some extent, who completes the surveys, but not with one hundred percent certainty. Also, each of the respondents’ answers is related to the answers from the previous surveys that he/she completed. This allows us to later analyze each subject according to all their answers in past surveys.
Internet users worldwide 2019
Every day, the number of Internet users around the world, including in Croatia, is increasing. This gives us access to a growing number of people and better sample selection when conducting surveys, and therefore allows us more accurate sampling methods and reduce error when analyzing survey data.
An example of running an online survey
Applying for a survey agency page
The first step a user must take if they choose to join the online panel is to sign up for one of the sites that offer online surveys.
The application is simple and consists of entering user information so that it can be better determined whether it is suitable for the target group of some of the surveys to be conducted, it takes a little longer because there are quite a lot of questions.
- First, you must enter a valid e-mail address, after which the user receives an activation link with which, by following it, he confirms his identity.
- He then chooses his gender, then his year of birth, and chooses his degree so far.
- Then there is the question about the frequency of Internet usage, and the data on the employment of the users is requested (choose the offered answer). It also requires information on the position of users in the structure of the enterprise and the type of activities that the company carries out.
- Next comes the question of the number of household members and the average net user income over the last three months.
- This is followed by the entry of the age of the other household members and the average monthly net income of the whole household, including scholarships, child allowances, etc.)
Who does most of the shopping for everyday goods (food, drink, and other household goods) and who contributes most to the household budget of the household?
Does the user have children and their marital status and frequency of online shopping or online shopping within a year?
- The following is the place of residence, ie in which county of the Republic of Croatia the beneficiary lives or, if he is a foreigner, in which country of the region he lives. Questions that are also if the user wants to participate in telephone surveys and is informed that he/she will be rewarded with points and that he/she can always and at any time unsubscribe from telephone surveys if he/she does not wish to answer the surveys again.
- After that, the application is completed and the user receives a mail in which he is informed that he is now a member of the online web panel and as a reward for his application receives a reward in a certain number of points. The user is now just waiting for an online survey link to be sent to his e-mail and filling it out to earn reward points, which after a certain amount of money can be exchanged for some of the vouchers offered.
If the user no longer wants to be a member of the online web panel, it is enough to request confirmation of his information on the site of the interviewing company and in the e-mail that immediately comes to his mail address, there is a link with which the user can unsubscribe from the online web panel and immediately cease to be a member same.
Conclusion
Online panels are large groups of people who self-reported as volunteer respondents in online surveys. Panels allow us to sample well because the population of panels is of people of different ages, from different socio-cultural backgrounds, different social status, religious beliefs, etc.
The benefits of the panel are that we have a long reach, that is, we are not physically tied to one area where the survey is conducted, but we can extend the area of the survey to the whole world if we need it.
It is also much easier and therefore faster and cheaper to extract the sample we need for a particular test.
It is also easier and faster to obtain test results because the answers are immediately entered in digital form and no copying from different materials is required and therefore the processing of the obtained data is faster with less cost. Likewise, with online panels, we can more easily touch on “sensitive” research topics, because people will be able to answer uncomfortable questions from the safety of their home more easily and honestly than in front of an interviewer.
We do not need a physical location to invite respondents, nor do we need interviewers to handle the selected interview sites. It is enough to create the questionnaire we need for our survey, send e-mails to selected individuals from the database who satisfy the sample requirements and within the given deadline we get the results of our survey.
As we saw in the previous part, the results obtained through fieldwork and the results obtained from online surveys are almost indistinguishable, so we can conclude that online surveys are relevant and very likely represent the future of surveys because of their advantages over traditional surveys.
