The Adventures of Fighting Poor Data Quality
4/8/2024

Are you ready to embark on a thrilling expedition through the dazzling domain of market research, where every data point holds the potential to make or break a business decision? We're about to take a wild ride through a world where data quality reigns supreme and our nemesis is the notorious survey bot. But first, dear reader, I would like you to imagine that you have just built a beautiful castle. The architect you hired designed it magnificently and every stone is intricately woven with gold. This castle is your pride and joy. You move in all your belongings and begin living there blissfully until one day, you hear a loud cracking noise. Before you know it, your castle is a pile of broken stone on the ground.

You stare at this heap where your castle once stood tall and wonder where you went wrong. The issue was that despite going to the best architect in the world, you never hired anyone to inspect the ground on which your castle was built. That ground happened to be crawling in survey bots that, like termites, brought your castle (or business) to the ground. In market research, data isn't just numbers on a spreadsheet – it's the magic elixir of organizations and the compass that navigates decisions. If you are familiar with the industry, you know that it can cost a pretty penny to conduct quantitative research studies. When every cent counts, the line between 24K gold and fool's gold can be paper thin.

To avoid having your castle built on false pretenses (bad data) and sending money down the drain, you need the proper defenses. So fear not readers! We, at Accelerant Research, will equip you with the formula to fight the uncertainties of data collection. As we navigate these stormy seas, we'll unravel the skills to discern the gems from the impostors. This is what we take with us to the battle of data integrity:

The Moat: Fraud Prevention Software

Our first mode of defense is software that helps to identify any fraudulent respondents before they even enter our surveys. This system assesses hundreds of data points about the traffic to our surveys and utilizes AI to refine their response removal processes over time. Additionally, this digital safety net catches 235% more fraud than alternate data quality technologies. Unfortunately, this does stop all the bad traffic from getting into surveys. The bad actors will always build a bridge to help them cross the moat.

The Traps: Survey Quality Checks

If the evil survey bots get past our moat, we have traps lying in wait for them at the foot of our research castle. We take the time to program quality assurance checks within our surveys to catch speedy survey takers not paying attention or sneaky survey bots. These quality checks include:

  • Trick questions/responses
  • Reversed scales
  • Quality control questions
  • Question timers
  • Survey timers
  • Straight-line identifiers

These checks ensure that people are reading every survey question carefully and taking their time as they progress through the questions. We have programmed our surveys to automatically disqualify respondents who fail these quality checks. We do everything we can to protect our castle!

The Sword: Trained Team Members Comb Through Every Response

Finally, our team of trained warriors (Accelerant Research staff) review the responses of every single respondent that successfully “completes” our surveys. We analyze a variety of different metrics and remove responses that do not fit our data quality standards. This is our golden sword and ensures excellent data quality.

We invite you to reach out to us for more information about our data quality assurances. Simply give us a call (704-206-8500) or send us an email ([email protected]). With our support and guidance in participant recruiting, technology/logistics management, and full-service quantitative survey development, Accelerant Research can provide you with high-quality and impactful insights.

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