YouthSight Adds 13-to-15-Year-Olds to Panel

London-based YouthSight has extended its 150,000-strong direct access community of 16 to 30-year olds to include the 13 to 15-year old demographic. The agency claims this makes it the only panel supplier in the UK to provide the MR industry with direct access to younger teens.

Under-15s are classified by the Market Research Society as kids or children, and before taking part in research studies they must obtain parental consent. YouthSight recruited these younger panellists through targeted social media advertising, and on joining new members are asked to provide their parents' e-mail addresses. Parents are then e-mailed with a request for their consent, and once given, YouthSight follows up with a phone call to the parent before the child is able to join the panel. All surveys for 13 to15-year olds are checked by the firm's researchers to ensure they are compliant with MRS rules.

Tatenda Musesengwa, MD of YouthSight's Panel and Data Services business, says that while the panel currently has just 600 members in the 13-15 age group, it will start to grow fairly rapidly now the firm has 'nailed down' the recruitment process. 'In extending our panel down to 13-year olds, we wanted to provide faster and higher quality access for researchers, while also offering all the protections that survey participants in this age bracket need. By front-loading the consent process we reduce the overhead on the parent (we only need to ask for consent once) and we hugely increase the accuracy of the ensuing data', Musesengwa explains.

YouthSight was previously concerned that parents had been taking surveys on behalf of their children, and so conducted an experiment through which it found that out of the 1000 interviews that were completed, 28% failed an age-check question at the end of the survey, while a further 25% of completes took place during school hours. Panel and Data Services Client Manager, Emma Quinn says that around half the surveys completed were with parents not kids, so, fixing this problem was a key motivation for YouthSight when considering how to extend its youth panel to include younger members.

Web site: www.youthsight.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.