The Gold Standard: Probability Sampling

While probability sampling is rarely used with online research, it helps to keep probability sampling in mind because many of the techniques to improve the representativeness of online surveys mimic or emulate the key characteristics of probability sampling....

Modeling the Online Population

Sampling for online surveys varies greatly in technique and representativeness. Important factors to consider are types of panels, selection of participants from those panels, and how and whether to weight survey results. While demographic variables are often compared...

How Many People Should We Survey?

The most common question we get asked is “How many people should we survey?” The answer is at the intersection of cost and error range. Let’s tackle error range first. When we do probability surveys of house lists, here is the margin of error...

The Meta-question: Should We Ask Questions?

Pete Cape, global knowledge director for SSI, recently shared his thinking behind his updates to the data collection methods module of the UGA/MRII online course, Principles of Market Research (PoMR). Presenting a webinar, “Fit for Purpose: Choosing the Right...