How survey fraud impacts research quality and biases critical KPIs with Steven Snell

Welcome to 'Now that's Significant,' a market research podcast hosted by Michael Howard, Head of Marketing at Infotools.

In this episode, Steven Snell, PhD, head of research at Rep Data, shares insights on data quality, combating online fraud, and research strategy in market research.

Key points in this discussion

1. Fraud in Market Research: Steven discusses the challenges of detecting fraud in survey research, highlighting how sophisticated fraudsters have become, making traditional detection methods less effective.

2. Impact of Fraudulent Data: The conversation addresses how fraudulent data can skew insights by dragging results towards the middle, making it difficult to derive actionable insights.

3. Role of Technology in Combating Fraud: Steven emphasizes the importance of using technology to fight fraud, noting that while tech enables fraud, it is also essential in detecting and preventing it.

4. Ownership of Data Quality: The discussion covers who should be responsible for data quality, suggesting that researchers, panel providers, and tech solutions must collaborate to ensure high-quality data.

5. Future of Fraud Prevention: Steven shares his views on the evolving landscape of fraud prevention, advocating for a comprehensive approach that includes pre-survey, during-survey, and post-survey measures.

A question to consider:

How can your organization implement more robust fraud detection and prevention measures to ensure the integrity of your data insights?

If you found this discussion valuable, please share it with others, subscribe to the podcast, and leave a review. Listen to our other episodes for more insights into market research.

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Established in 1990, we work with some of the world’s top brands around the world, including Coca-Cola, Orange, Samsung, and Mondelēz.

Our powerful cloud-based platform, Harmoni, is purpose-built for market research. From data processing to investigation, dashboards to collaboration, Harmoni is a true "data-to-decision-making" solution for in-house corporate insights teams and agencies.

While we don't facilitate market research surveys, provide sample, or collect data, we make it easy for market researchers to find and share compelling insights that go over-and-above what stakeholders want, inspiring them to act decisively.

One of the most powerful features of Harmoni is Discover, a time-tested, time-saving, and investigative approach to data analysis. Using automated analyses to reveal patterns and trends, Discover minimizes potential research bias by removing the need for requesting and manually analyzing scores of cumbersome crosstabs – often seeing what you can’t.

Discover helps you easily find what differentiates groups that matter to you, uncover what makes them unique, and deliver data points that are interesting, relevant, and statistically significant, plus see things others can’t. Add to all this an impending GenAI feature, and you have an extremely powerful, future-proofed tool.