Quota Sampling Almost Twice as Popular as Weighting

The GreenBook team included a new section on aspects of survey research projects in their GreenBook Research Industry Trends Report survey of 2,087 researchers around the world. Here are those findings, which provide a useful overview of the state of survey research today.

While 90% of researchers surveyed have been involved in quantitative projects, 88% have been involved with survey research (leaving 2% of quantitative researchers who did not use surveys).

How frequently are certain tasks performed within survey research projects? Running crosstabs is the most common: 72% of quantitative researchers run cross-tabulations for most or all of their survey projects. When it comes to techniques used to increase the representativeness of those surveys, 62% use quota sampling for most or all projects, almost twice the 33% who weight the data for most or all projects. Only 13% use multiple panel providers per survey for most or all projects.

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Author Notes:

Jeffrey Henning

Jeffrey Henning, IPC is a professionally certified researcher and has personally conducted over 1,400 survey research projects. Jeffrey is a member of the Insights Association and the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers. In 2012, he was the inaugural winner of the MRA’s Impact award, which “recognizes an industry professional, team or organization that has demonstrated tremendous vision, leadership, and innovation, within the past year, that has led to advances in the marketing research profession.” In 2022, the Insights Association named him an IPC Laureate. Before founding Researchscape in 2012, Jeffrey co-founded Perseus Development Corporation in 1993, which introduced the first web-survey software, and Vovici in 2006, which pioneered the enterprise-feedback management category. A 35-year veteran of the research industry, he began his career as an industry analyst for an Inc. 500 research firm.