"Make money for taking surveys"," Cash for your opinion", "Make easy money at home".Everywhere you look there is a company willing to pay people to participate in their surveys. It seems like a win win situation,
participants get paid for providing their opinion, market research company gets paid for conducting research and companies, that fund research, gathers valuable data.
But, how valuable is that data?
Well run surveys are still vital to those companies who wish to research a market and obtain feedback on particular products or services. Many people are willing to express an opinion, and a small incentive like a chance to win a prize or a small payment is often all that is required to encourage people to give up their time and participate.
For years market research companies have assembled groups of participants into survey pools or survey panels, groups of people willing to provide an opinion on a range of subjects. Often incentives of nominal value were offered as a 'thank you' for participant's time; however explosion of 'paid for taking surveys' websites has spawned a new profession - professional survey participant (PSP).
For companies that are relying on market research generated by panels of PSP's question they must ask is how flawed is data that they are relying on? Does average PSP represent a cross section of society or a niche? What social group do they really belong to and is it smart for a company to base research on groups of people that are willing to comment part time, and sometimes, full time, on anything and everything?
Not all panels should be tarnished with a negative brush after all customer and employee surveys to name just two rely on a survey pool. However, customers and employees are to some degree stakeholders in a company's research, by participating customers will benefit from better products and services, employees will be able to voice concerns and help make improvements to working conditions and methods, more importantly views of customer and employee are valuable. Likewise panels that are made up of hand picked participants chosen for their knowledge, expertise and experience are equally valid and in some cases a necessity.
