The overriding objective of ISO/TC 225 is to maintain, and keep up to date, a single, comprehensive quality standard that sets out guidance and requirements directly relating to the way in which market, opinion and social research (MOSR) projects are planned, carried out, supervised and reported to the clients commissioning such projects. These standards cover all stages of a research project from initial contact between client and service provider, to the presentation of results to the client.This is a preview, for the full text please check it out the ESOMAR's Publication Store.
After the rapid and widespread emergence of online access panels, we are currently witnessing a new trend towards online custom panels that are specifically built, used and managed for research purposes of one company or its brand(s). This study compares the online access panel 'XL Online Panels' with a dedicated and branded online research panel from Heinz, generating conclusions on the relative advantages and disadvantages related to using either of them. Specific attention is paid to panel member conditioning (broadly defined as changes in response patterns over time due to learning) and quality. Differences in conditioning and quality in the Heinz and control panel are highlighted and the implications for online market research and panel management are discussed.
Early initiatives of many industry bodies (ESOMAR, MRS, ADM, SYNTEC, MOA) have proactively taken initiatives to formulate guidelines for online research. However, as the industry was then still learning how to conduct an online survey, relevant topics were missed in these early guidelines. Moreover these local guidelines differed from each other and, as many online surveys have an international character, the market is at present largely unregulated. Therefore it is often difficult to learn exactly what quality standard, if any, is being applied. As long as the quality definitions are unknown or blurred, online panels will stay under the suspicion of being a somewhat unreliable or unpredictable research tool.
This paper looks at the various sources of bias, discusses how to reduce them or, at least, how to measure them.
In this paper the authors argue that it is inevitable that initiatives such as BS5750 will continue to pick off the more concrete, tangible aspects of the market research process that most readily lend themselves to the specification of required standards - but at the same time, by their nature, these initiatives will fail to address the softer, more complex determinants of quality. This being case, the authors argue that we must start developing frameworks that will help market researchers enhance the quality of what they are providing at critical points within the market research process.
This paper consists of two parts - in the first part Vincent Ophoff, Managing Director of NSS and President of the IRIS network, describes the "process control" necessary for successful design and management of multinational surveys. In the second, Jane Kalim, International Co-ordinator at Research Services Ltd, discusses two of the practical issues of country differences, sampling techniques and fieldwork.
This paper describes a system that I have been developing within the MRB International Group of companies: a system designed to overcome some of the problems associated with co-ordinating/quality-controlling qualitative research in multi-country studies.
In Germany two continuous research services are available measurement the relative readership of the editorial elements in 30 major medical magazines. One service is private, the other one is part of the syndicated audience research organisation LA-MED. Both services apply, broadly speaking, the same method: The doctors are asked to mark, while reading, every editorial matter they look at in the magazine. The copies are mailed to the research institute where they are analysed. The editing house Medical Tribune, Wiesbaden, has been using the results of this research since 1976 in order to improve the quality of their publications. The editorial staff is regularly confronted to the research findings and practical consequences are drawn. The improvements mainly concern the formulation of headlines, the choice of pictures, the order in which articles are positioned through the book and, finally, the mix of topics to be treated. It has been possible over the years to draw some general conclusions out of the experiences gathered in applying this type of research to every-day-journalism.
The paper starts from the standpoint that most of the recent literature on fieldwork organisation and quality control is concerned with the conventional field force consisting of a comparatively large number of freelance interviewers dispersed throughout the country. The paper then discusses the advantages that derive from using a small field force, principally those arising from the fact that interviewers in a small field force must work for the company concerned on a frequent and continual basis, which results in the interviewer identifying closely with the company and in the company being more easily able to impose and maintain the standards it requires. The further advantages of using an exclusive field force are then described. Finally, the paper looks at the disadvantages of this approach, which are mainly the apparent limitations on flexibility of capacity and geographical coverage, and concludes with an illustration of the way Burke has adapted the concept to differing market situations throughout Europe.
The paper illustrates that the quality of fieldwork is still a matter of concern and that although research suppliers and buyers are aware of this, and recognise fieldwork as a most important element of any research project, little is being done to improve the situation. Indeed some fears have been expressed that the problem is increasing.