Shagboy

What would be the point in pushing people into low qualification/high rejection surveys? Isn't the point of these survey companies to collect data for the creators of the surveys? I'm not sure I understand your point.

bob12403

Well, consider that Dynata has many clients, some of whom have those low-point surveys, some with surveys that are more rewarding for the participants. It seems logical that if presented with 5 surveys each worth 1.5 points, and 5 more surveys each worth four or five points, most people are going to try to answer as many of the higher point surveys as possible. But if very few people are attempting the low point surveys, what happens to Dynata's clientele (the survey companies that employ Dynata as well as the customers who want survey results) if those companies look at the number of survey attempts and they're very low? I would think they would not be happy about doing further business with Dynata.

If attempting to answer those cheap surveys is the unofficial entryway to the goodies, then Dynata can effectively goose up the raw numbers of attempted surveys they present to those clients. And if it's true that a large number of people are getting disqualified, as far as I know that's not Dynata's problem, as they just administer the surveys.

That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Shagboy

Who determines the point value of a survey? If the determination is made by the survey creator they can value the survey however they want. Presumably the survey creators are after certain data points from a group of participants. Those participants can be existing or potential customers from a particular demographic, between 25 and 40, married women, Republicans, people that are interested in cruises, people in a particular zip code, etc. They can then determine the value of the survey accordingly. Often a high paying survey can be very long. I took a survey today on tea that took almost an hour and paid very well. Surveys often estimate the time it will take to complete and offer higher compensation to get people to finish it.If the survey writers only want to know how many people traveled to Boston for the 4th of July a survey may take a minute or so and pay 1 or 1.5 points. Most low paying surveys take little time to complete and are compensated accordingly.



I attempt low point surveys under the assumption the survey will be short and the qualifications will be broad and I will likely qualify. What is more important to the survey writers, completed surveys or disqualified respondents? I would think completed surveys is the goal. It would be interesting to talk to the companies that use surveys for their data points to learn their criteria.

One thing we can agree on is putting the qualifying questions at the end of the survey and then determining the survey taker is not in the correct demographic. In my estimation they are just stealing information, they have their survey completed and do not have to pay any compensation. Another annoying gambit is the dreaded "there has been an error" message and the survey closes.

ankomonkey

Let's say e-rewards have two surveys that they are looking to complete for the clients who pay them for collecting data.

Survey 1: Only 1 in every 10 people will qualify
Survey 2: 9 in every 10 people will qualify

To get paid, they need to fill both surveys with qualifying respondents. Their algorithms need to try to get enough people into Survey 1 to get the required number of completed surveys, taking into account the qualification rate of basically all their surveys. I'm not saying that's the only factor, but it must be a main factor. Their clients will go elsewhere if e-rewards can't get them enough people who qualify for and complete their surveys.

To your other point about who decides the incentive value, I suspect clients get prices from multiple providers of respondents and make a choice on who to use. Each provider's quote will presumably be based on the cost to them of providing the reward to the respondents.

Shagboy

It would seem to me a company like E-rewards gets paid either way. There are server costs, hosting costs and general administrative costs. A company like E-Rewards offers a service, they will host a survey for a fee. Why would they care if the survey is completed? The company wanting the information hires E-Rewards because they do not have the expertise or the infrastructure to host the survey themselves. E-Rewards has both. Payment to the survey taker has to be determined by the company hiring E-Rewards to host their survey. Success or disqualification, E-Rewards gets paid and if a survey taker completes the survey the company writing the survey agrees to pay a certain amount, 1 point, 4 points as a reward, E-Rewards has no control over this. If a survey has a 90% failure rate it is not the fault of E-Rewards bur rather the criteria for success are too strict. That is on the survey creator, not the survey host.

ankomonkey

e-rewards has the relationship with the panellist/member. I would expect them to have rules over what their clients can do/offer to respondents/panellists/members for legal reasons and in the interests of retaining them. Maybe e-rewards and their clients share some of these decisions and the e-rewards terms & conditions and their website probably give clues about this, but I'm not willing to read either of them to try to work this out without a points reward!

Shagboy

Agreed!!

apeortdz

I am getting a lot of surveys that end in {"error": "missing session"} with no credit given, of course. Is anyone else experiencing this often?