Online Research Guidelines Released

In the US, a new guide has been launched offering MR buyers metrics and recommendations to improve online survey data quality. The work of more than forty consumer research agencies and online sample providers, it also includes input from researchers in fifty leading client firms.

Platforms for Data Quality Progress: The Client's Guide to Rapid Improvement of Online Research offers practical solutions to address online research validity and reliability concerns, as well as specific questions clients should ask their online research partners and transparency protocols for sample providers.

'This collection is a strong start to moving the industry toward a comprehensive process that validates the research results we rely on to make business decisions,' commented Kevin Keith, Microsoft's General Manager of Market Research & Insights. 'Microsoft is adopting many of these processes and will be making them part of the Standard Operating Procedures over the coming months.'

The free 40-page guidebook is the result of an 18-month series of industry meetings led by RFL Communications, a market research industry news and information service that published the guidebook.

It has already been distributed in hard copy to more than 3,000 research buyers. Details are at RFL's site at www.rflonline.com .

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