How are fraudulent online panel studies impacting your data?

The post-pandemic world is still recovering from all the global meltdowns it faced with an apprehension of the possible future setbacks it can face!

While most industries & businesses had to face its dreadful consequences, few had to gulp it down more than the others.

Lots of researchers had to move their studies from the lab to the internet, while several other online panel studies saw a high surge in their responses.

Online panel studies, undoubtedly, are much helpful to research firms — until they are fraudulent!!

But how often are these surveys fabricated?

According to Pew Research Centre, approximately 4% to 7% of responses to an online panel study were bogus. This, however, only considered the most obvious omitted responses — duplicated, contradicted, or gibberish ones.

But another study claimed that nearly 17% of responses for a given online survey possibly contained fabricated data. This number saw a drop of 5% in developed nations and a rise of 26% in developing countries.

However, when a much more intensive assessment was carried out with some of the industry’s largest panel providers, 46% of respondents had to be tossed out of the study for poor quality — and the omission was considered only when a respondent made four or more mistakes.

This clearly reflects how much panel suppliers are under analyzing their output for clients. With inadequate quality checks and rapid falling engagement, this would be considered extremely terrible for most industries.

So, could the conventional ‘back in the day in-person interviewing’ be considered more effective since the online technology era finds it challenging to verify people with panel providers being so neglectful about such issues?

The purpose of this writing is not to denounce any industry or the online panel providers but to dig at the mass damage that is happening within the industry.

Quality control could be difficult, requiring a considerable investment in technology and strategies for obtaining the data that researchers can trust. That being said, it is also clear that they are not putting in enough to address these issues.

After months of surveys with thousands of online panel respondents, Harmon Research found that around 90% of researchers were not taking adequate steps to ensure online panel quality. In fact, 25% of them did not omit respondents with bogus verbatims, while 90% did not care to compare responses, find plagiarized answers, or track respondents’ time spent on individual answers.

This is not great!

It’s a no-brainer to explain how much damage these unidentified bogus respondents make to the end clients. They practically tear the ‘supposedly meaningful’ data, leading to distorted decisions and misleading strategic choices for businesses.

With the world going digital, no business would want to deal with data, half of which is utter trash.

What is the solution?

There are several ways to find and eliminate fraud response rates in online surveys, but the strike has to be taken up from home itself.

How is CleverX solving this problem?

As an industry, it is essential to tackle such issues together, i.e., not only the panel study providers but businesses also need to take a plunge to find the solutions that would suit them best.

CleverX conducts a deep, thorough background check, ensuring that none of the professionals on its platform are faux. Furthermore, it lets the businesses find their own set of leading industry people to conduct their online panel studies, resulting in data that is not 100% authentic but also reliable.

Take a look at how we are changing the online survey industry and how market research firms are making a hit with us!