It uses a newly developed framework to assess the validity of global respondents, which couples technology enabled tools with human mitigation. The model combines proprietary and industry leading technology, overseen by dedicated human intervention. The new solution monitors behaviours across various survey touchpoints and assigns an integrity score per respondent.
On average, the data collection division has seen a 32% removal rate of respondents failing integrity checks.
Thomas Bates, Head of Client Services for the global data collection division at Researchbods, says:
“We’ve adopted this strategy on the back of estimates from industry bodies that global survey fraud – bot farms, ghost completes or professional panellists with multiple online personas – accounts for hundreds of millions of pounds each year. We not only have to get ahead of this issues, we need to stay ahead. As such, our newly created business unit is dedicated to checking the integrity of each and every completed survey we collect.”
The framework first confirms that the person completing the survey is a real human being, before then measuring the plausibility and reliability of their answers. All checks, when cross referenced, create a unique integrity score per survey respondent.
The data integrity team was soft launched three months ago to measure the validity of the tools before being rolled out to clients. On average, the data collection division has seen a 32% removal rate of respondents failing integrity checks, this figure spikes in certain sectors, such as B2B sampling.
Current data integrity team members include Mia McKeown and Maria Petrova, data processing specialists promoted from within the global data collection division.
Existing and prospective clients will now benefit from the collection of survey removal stats per project, which are built into a live norms database. This enables business intelligence to track fraudulent trends and techniques globally over time and allows Researchbods to update processes to proactively counter any issues.
Dale Henry, Sales Director for the global data collection division at Researchbods, concludes:
“We want to give clients the confidence to stand behind their data when it comes to informing strategic business decisions. This new team certainly helps us to do that, and it will continually evolve as tech inevitably drives further innovation across our industry.”
