To accommodate a sustained panel growth, allow for more advanced and flexible sampling techniques and above all, to ensure the continued quality of the data derived from our online panels, Norstat is moving all our panels to Confirmit Community Panel.

In our endeavour to meet the increasing demand for online panel research, we have continued building our capacities and strengthening our capabilities within the online field over the course of the past year. Our efforts have not been in vain. Determined recruitment, coupled with organic growth and acquisitions, have resulted in an overall panel growth of more than 70% in 2008 alone. While we will continue to invest in developing and further expanding our panels throughout 2009, our primary focus remains on delivering the best quality data to our clients, regardless of methodology. The panel management software we are currently using has served this purpose well, but we believe we can do even better. This is why we have decided to migrate our panels to Confirmit Community Panel.

 

Core benefits of our panel migration:

 

-   More advanced sampling features

-   More precise sampling = better demographic spread in data

-   More background variables = cost reduction on low penetration target studies

 

With Confirmit Community Panel, we will be offering a full-featured balanced sampling system, which will allow us to draw samples on e.g. expected return or any other criteria fit for purpose, rather than only representative figures. We will have enhanced elimination possibilities, allowing us to filter panellists on e.g. idle time, category participation, survey history - or for that matter, any given background variable. We will be able to run simultaneous sample jobs in parallel and easily provide clients with a detailed overview of exactly how the sampling was carried out on any specific project.

 

Although we will continue to sample on the same three demographic dimensions (gender, age and region) on nationally online representative studies, we will be increasing the number of cells in the matrix by a factor of 3 - 4 (on average across countries). The result is a more detailed and ’precise’ sampling which will lead to an equally better demographic spread in the data we collect. While this will not have any major effects on ongoing studies, it will generally further inverse selection probabilities and reduce selection bias and -variances. In other words, it will decrease the deviation on any weights subsequently applied to the data.

 

In the process of migrating our panels, we have also expanded the number of background variables we register on our panel members. This will allow us to draw samples on a greater number of low incidence target groups and thus reduce the costs on our clients for running such studies on our online panels. We expect to have migrated all panels by April 1st, 2009. A full list of background variables will be included in our PanelBook in April. For further information on our panel migration, please contact your local project manager or either of the below.

 

Best regards,

 

 

John Lauring Pedersen, CEO

 

 

Claes Romberg	Panel manager	claes.romberg@norstat.se	+4670786013
Dan Kvistbo	Online director	dan.kvistbo@norstat.dk	+4527772016
Henrik Kronberg	Chief methodologist	henrik.kronberg@norstat.se	+46708989853