Sample Quality & Fraud Prevention

According to the latest GRIT Insights Practice Report, more than 40% of brand-side insights professionals fell short of planned sample size, did not get their desired sample composition, had to address someone else’s doubts about the quality of the research, and had their own serious doubts about the research due to sample-related issues in the past six months – multiple times. Even worse, this news probably doesn’t surprise you.

Sample availability is the first obstacle. The insights world has an unquenchable thirst for research, and successful work results in more precise definitions of target markets. Consequently, there is often not enough sample to meet study needs or else the kind of people you need to target are not represented or identifiable. Some panels may not cover some hard-to-reach segments, either by design or by neglect.

Even if you can find the sample that fits your targets in the quantities you need, they may be poor quality respondents. They might not pay attention to anything but the incentive, they may be over-sampled, or they simply may not be good at providing responses. And if they are very good at providing responses, you might have another problem entirely: they might not be real.

The industry is currently at war with fraudulent respondents, particularly the digital kind. Even if the respondent is real, their answer may not be: they may use GenAI to answer for them, giving you an opinion representative of the vast wisdom of the internet but not their own.

Innovations in insights technology provide tools to bolster sample quality and availability while detecting fake respondents and preventing them from participating. These can address identification and recruitment of hard-to-find panelists, techniques to keep them engaged and motivated, and real-time issues during fieldwork, such as identifying and thwarting fraudulent or poor quality participation.

There is practically no one in the research, analytics, and insights industry who can afford to look the other way when it comes to sample quality. Over 80% of brand-side researchers manage projects that use sample, and nearly everyone else uses the results of sample-dependent research. It’s hard to imagine a person who hasn’t heard about sample fraud, and it’s harder to imagine someone who’s heard about it not having doubts about the quality of research if they haven’t been exposed to solutions. Now is the time to learn about those solutions and defend the credibility of your work – or rather, June 7 is the time, and it’s coming soon!