ARF launches ‘research on research' initiative

US-- The Advertising Research Foundation's (ARF) Online Research Quality Council is commissioning a ‘research on research' project with a view to improving the quality of online studies.

The ARF said discussions with clients had thrown up a range of concerns which the industry body hopes to address with this initiative – including the replicability of online studies, the length of surveys, online response rates, representativeness and respondent behaviour.

The research will focus on measuring the degree of respondent duplication in samples, both national and regional, when multiple sample sources are used.

It will also compare the consistency of survey results across online sample providers and across survey modes, and compare wave-over-wave consistency of survey results for independent samples from the same provider.

Turning to the survey-takers themselves, the research will measure self-reported multi-panel membership, respondent motivation and attentiveness.

The Online Research Quality Council has issued five separate requests for proposals covering various aspects of the study to be carried out. Click here for more information.

The council was formed last August to address the industry's growing concerns about poor quality research and initiate new standards for online work. ARF president Bob Barocci had previously compared the online sector to the “wild west”.

Author: James Verrinder

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