Data Quality

Customer satisfaction, and thus quality, are our top priority. Through rigorous participant verification, state-of-the-art fraud detection, and AI-supported quality assurance, we ensure that our data meets the highest standards. With ongoing panel maintenance and comprehensive auditing mechanisms, we guarantee reliable and authentic survey results – for informed decisions and robust insights.

Participant Verification

  • Double opt-in process: Each participant actively confirms their registration and is verified through a two-step process.
  • Targeted Recruitment: Our participants are recruited through a variety of different channels - with a focus on long-term panel memberships. We completely avoid river sampling and similar methods, which can negatively impact data quality.
  • Technical Fraud Detection: Digital fingerprinting technology, IP tracking, and device checks help us identify potential fraud attempts early and filter them out before the first survey is taken.
  • Profile Validation: Participant data is regularly compared with survey information to uncover inconsistencies.
  • B2B Verification: We recruit B2B participants exclusively through specialized channels such as trade magazines, strategic partnerships, and targeted display ads on relevant websites. These participants undergo special security checks, including subject-specific knowledge checks to verify their industry affiliation.

Quality Assurance During Survey Participation

When we handle the programming, we offer comprehensive quality assurance measures that are often not used in self-programmed surveys or are simply not easily implemented technically.

We therefore particularly recommend that our end customers place programming and quality control in our experienced hands.

  • Plausibility and Consistency Checks: We integrate targeted control questions to identify implausible or inconsistent answers.
  • Time-Based Plausibility Checks: In addition to the overall processing time, we also analyze the response times for individual questions. This allows us to reliably detect unrealistically fast response behavior.
  • Response pattern recognition: Our algorithms identify conspicuous response patterns such as straight-lining, random answers, or excessive "don't know" responses.
  • AI-supported open-ended analysis: Free-text responses are reviewed by artificial intelligence for quality, meaningfulness, and copy-paste patterns.
  • Quality score: From all this information, we calculate a quality score for each participant. Interviews that do not meet our quality requirements are excluded.

Quality Assurance for Sample-Only Projects

We also implement comprehensive quality assurance measures for sample-only projects to ensure that only verified and authentic participants participate in surveys.

Our participants undergo strict verification upon registration and must complete a double opt-in process.

In addition, we use continuous technical verification mechanisms such as digital fingerprint technology, IP tracking, device checks, and duplicate detection to detect and prevent multiple participation and fraudulent behavior at an early stage.

Since we do not have direct access to the collected responses in sample-only projects, we cannot perform content-based response validation.

However, all technical and procedural security mechanisms that are also used in full-service projects continue to apply.

Should customers discover any anomalies, we consistently address them. according to:

  • Suspicious participants are reviewed and, if necessary, quarantined or blocked.
  • Our team supports clients in identifying problematic participants.
  • Repeated violations lead to permanent exclusion from our panel.

Even with sample-only projects, our clients benefit from our proactive quality control and a structured exclusion process that ensures the long-term integrity of the collected data.

Ongoing panel maintenance and quality

  • Quarantine and blocking mechanisms: Participants with conspicuous behavior are either temporarily quarantined or permanently excluded from the panel.
  • Regular profile updates: At defined intervals, we actively encourage our panelists to update their information to ensure that all profile data is up-to-date and correct.
  • Feedback analysis: Panelists have the opportunity to rate surveys after completion. We use this feedback not only to improve the participant experience but also to identify potential weaknesses in questionnaires and optimize the survey structure. We analyze surveys that repeatedly receive negative ratings in collaboration with our clients to identify and resolve potential problems such as unclear wording, excessively long questionnaires, or technical difficulties at an early stage.

Transparency and Manual Reviews

  • Project-based quality reports: Upon request, we create detailed quality reports containing exclusion rates, dropout rates, and other quality metrics.
  • Manual reviews by research experts: Suspicious cases are additionally reviewed by our research experts. If necessary, we replace unreliable interviews with follow-up surveys – of course, at no additional cost to our clients.

Your success, our goal!