The discourse of this paper is that we can only achieve good quality (and therefore good business) through critique by taking a step back, looking at history and understanding why research and the web exist in the first place. We have to stop just talking to ourselves and maintain relevance to our end clients and also to our respondents. Let's not forget them in all of this! Only once we remain true to these points can we once again find definitions of good quality. Once we accept this line of argument we are in a strong position to not only capture the present but also anticipate the future and what this means for us all. And that is surely what our end clients want from us above all.
This paper presents a case study of how GfK NOP is moving one of the UK's major market measurement studies online.In this case study we share our learning and illustrate, with empirical data, the limits and possibilities that panel based research offers in this most demanding arena for online research. Our conclusion is that in this instance, it is inappropriate to replace the traditional face to face methodology with a wholly online solution but that, instead, a multi-modal approach which combines face to face with online interviewing is the way forward.
This paper sheds a first light on the question whether or not the recruitment type of access panel members as well as duplication (i.e. respondents belonging to multiple panels) really makes a difference in terms of the quality of the research data obtained. A first major implication of this study is that we should not be too concerned about the fact that people join multiple panels as their quality is not inferior to people who have only joined one panel. A second major out-take we can derive from our results is that multi-method recruitment for building online panels is not a necessary condition for building a good quality panel.