Strategic Research’s survey panel consists of over 10,000 individuals throughout Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon; for City of Spokane is roughly 2,500; and Spokane County is close to 4,000 individuals. This number continues to grow as we add more people to our panel through our ongoing surveying and focus group projects.
For panel surveys, we use a mixed mode approach to collect the data; first we reach out via email to our panel to collect responses, then we follow up with phone calls to non-responding panel participants who are within demographic segments that are underrepresented among the responses collected so far (men, typically).
During each panel survey project we strive to collect between 350-450 responses to ensure statistical relevancy. Statistical relevancy can still be relevant to our panel surveys because our panel, in general, compromises a random mix of the population that is willing to participate in surveys.
One can argue that through panel surveying we are only collecting a convenience sample, but in our experience we have found that people who are unwilling to participate in a focus group (that hang up on us or choose not to answer when we call) do the same when we call for a survey. The prevalence of CallerID can often make even a telephone sample a convenience sample – given the respondent chooses to answer only after they know who is calling. As long as we control the final outputs of the sample to be similar to the demographics of the total population and apply weights as needed (which we do), we can attest that the results are relevant.
An added benefit, our ad hoc panel surveys do not require partners to field – we can field these surveys anytime, at any interval you require. Often clients will choose to conduct a pre- and post- campaign survey to measure advertising penetration within the market.
Costs are a little different for these from a typical Omnibus telephone survey; rather than by question (as much of the survey is conducted online) they are flat fee.
$5,500 for questionnaire design, setup, hosting, fielding and analysis for the first round (n=350-450 responses; +/- 6% margin of error)
$3,500 for each iteration after that. (n=350-450 responses; +/- 6% margin of error)