Why would anyone take your survey? Why would anyone take your survey?

The data quality problem in the survey industry

Picture your last trip to the DMV. Slow, frustrating, and no one wanted to be there. But at least there was a payoff — a driver’s license. 

Now imagine doing all that… for nothing. That’s what online surveys feel like today for most people.

Fraudsters are gaming the system. Are the rest of us losing? 

Let’s recap for a second. When people think about bad data, they usually think about fraud entering a survey. But bad data is also about the good people who never make it in. Or worse: They start it, hate it, and then rush through or leave halfway.

Karine Pepin has read a lot of forums about the panelist experience, and there are basic expectations that we are not meeting today:

• They don't want to waste their time. When we're screening people to see if they qualify for a survey, we sometimes repeat too many questions. Respondents don't want to be asked the same screener questions over and over again. But since surveys don't communicate with each other, we have to ask age, gender, ethnicity — that sort of demographic questions multiple times. 
• They want surveys that are not too cognitively demanding, and platforms that won't crash for them in the middle of a survey. 
• Most importantly, they wanna be paid fairly — which is not the case today.

Check out Pepin’s post on respondent expectations to learn more.

The good news is, even small tweaks — from the questions you ask to qualify your respondents, to the way you format your questions, to the length of your interview — can lead to better respondent experience and better insights.

The difficult part is balance — you need to keep your survey friendly enough to keep your people engaged, but firm enough to keep fraud out.

See Potloc’s research on research findings about balancing respondent experience with fraud prevention — and why you need both.

But let’s be honest. Will we ever live in a world where everyone loves taking surveys? Life’s busy, distractions are everywhere, and time is money.

So if it’s not 300 real CFOs… who’s really behind your data? 

Today, the system isn’t exactly open about how it sources and verifies your data. And with genAI, fraud is actually getting harder and harder to spot. The result? Some of the worst data can look very similar to the best.

In the next episode of the Data Quality Simplified Series, we’ll get into the threat of “good-looking fraud”. In an industry that sells in black boxes, we’ll see why what survey suppliers hide is what can hurt your decisions the most.