esomar 36

The ESOMAR 36 is a set of standardized questions that help buyers to make decisions about choosing a sample supplier, to ensure that the provider’s practices fit with research objectives. Please see our answers to these comprehensive questions below.

1. What experience does your company have in providing online samples for market research? How long have you been providing this service? Do you also provide similar services for other uses such as direct marketing? If so, what proportion of your work is for market research?

Rep Data was founded in 2020 by Patrick Stokes, a 15-year veteran in the market research sample space holding prior positions at both Dynata and Lucid. The company quickly grew, bringing on many other leaders from the online sample industry to spearhead company initiatives, representing decades of combined experience in the space. Since inception, Rep Data has provided sample and full-service data collection services for more than 300 client companies in industries ranging from market research agencies, management consultancies, Fortune 500 corporations, advertising agencies, brand strategy consultancies, universities, and global communications / PR agencies. One hundred percent of our work is for quantitative market research studies.

Rep Data’s frontline staff is selected primarily based on existing experience in the sample industry or related fields. On average, Rep Data’s project managers come into the company with five or more years of on-the-ground experience. Many hold advanced certifications in the field, such as the Principles of Market Research (PMR) credentials, Insights Professional Certification (IPC) and are experts in various technology platforms commonly used for online sampling. Our internal database contains robust process documentation for training and for reference by staff.

3. What other services do you offer? Do you cover sample-only, or do you offer a broad range of data collection and analysis services?

Rep Data is a full-service data collection firm offering services such as project execution consulting, custom recruitment, representative sample methodology, quota management, feasibility testing, programming and fieldwork, including ongoing, layered quality checks throughout a project lifecycle. When fieldwork closes, we deliver the collected data as a topline report, crosstabs, open-end (verbatim) coding or statistical analysis with a PowerPoint deck.

4. Using the broad classifications above, from what sources of online sample do you derive participants?

Rep Data provides unbiased sample, facilitates the search for hard-to-reach sample, and delivers every project with the highest level of quality and customer care. Because we don’t own our own proprietary sample sources or panels, we recruit from a wide range of sources, including from the largest providers in the sample space and by leveraging direct relationships with specialty panels in specific markets and verticals. Rep Data’s outreach team provides custom recruitment methods when needed to engage survey takers who may not be in panels. For example, for niche B2B audiences, respondents are sourced from business databases, professional association lists and direct from business-related social media platforms, and are verified, enrolled and profiled individually.

See above. None of Rep Data’s sources is proprietary.

6. What recruitment channels are you using for each of the sources you have described? Is the recruitment process ‘open to all’ or by invitation only? Are you using probabilistic methods? Are you using affiliate networks and referral programs and in what proportions? How does your use of these channels vary by geography?

Rep Data does not use probabilistic methods, and does not actively procure sample from affiliate networks or referral programs. For consumer projects, we limit our sampling to non-probabilistic, online, opt-in panels, all of which are “open to all”.

7. What form of validation do you use in recruitment to ensure that participants are real, unique, and are who they say they are?

Rep Data employs a layered approach to ensure that participants are real, unique and are who they say they are. Fraud mitigation techniques include: digital fingerprinting and fraud identification, which examines potential respondents based on their past external activity before they engage in a survey; text analytics which measure and score a respondent’s engagement in real-time by analyzing overall quality and thoughtfulness of open-end responses; and respondent-level tracking which tracks a respondent’s rate of activity across the market research ecosystem, and is useful in flagging professional survey takers. In addition, we have added a new proprietary screening method that includes hidden text variables that are only visible to bots, helping to screen them out of any surveys.

Other practical steps that we take with every project to help ensure participant quality include unbiased, efficient sourcing from multiple panels and sample suppliers in order to deliver more representative sample. We also offer expert fieldwork management to catch respondent anomalies at any point during the data collection process.

8. What brand (domain) and/or app are you using with proprietary sources?

Rep Data doesn’t own any kind of app, panel or website used to derive sample.

9. Which model(s) do you offer to deliver sample? Managed service, self-serve, or API integration?

Rep Data offers a managed service model to deliver sample.

10. Do you let buyers control which sources of sample to include in their projects, and if so how? Do you have any integration mechanisms with third-party sources offered?

Buyers can request the limiting or highlighting of specific sources, and Rep Data can accommodate these requests. If buyers wish to know where their sample is coming from, we offer full transparency and visibility into sources. Rep Data doesn’t offer intercepts and does not have any integration mechanisms with third-party sources.

11. Of the sample sources you have available, how would you describe the suitability of each for different research applications?

Because we are not restricted to specific panels or sample suppliers, Rep Data offers greater reach and diverse sourcing, which ultimately provides highly representative sample for market research projects. Rep Data’s model is best suited for quantitative consumer or B2B ad-hoc studies, and generally doesn’t accommodate recruitment for communities, focus groups or qualitative studies.

The Rep Data team utilizes industry-leading tools to create custom quota plans and to field to census targets. By multi-sourcing sample on every project, Rep Data is able to ensure that the samples we provide are as representative as possible and that difficult quota groups are more easily filled.

13. What profiling information do you hold on at least 80% of your panel members plus any intercepts known to you through prior contact? How does this differ by the sources you offer? How often is each of those data points updated? Can you supply these data points as appends to the data set? Do you collect this profiling information directly or is it supplied by a third party?

Rep Data doesn’t own any panels or panelist relationships, so therefore does not retain profiling information on respondents first-hand. Each third-party supplier that we use makes its own profiling decisions, and we tap into their stored profiling data points to quickly qualify respondents for any given survey.

14. What information do you need about a project in order to provide an estimate of feasibility? What, if anything, do you do to give upper or lower boundaries around these estimates?

Rep Data determines project feasibility up-front to set reasonable goals and expectations for any project, collecting detailed information about the audience needed for a survey, length of survey, cross-device compatibility, geographical parameters, languages, time in field and more. We conduct incidence rate (IR) checks before a study goes into field to determine the qualifying rate and degree of difficulty in reaching an audience. We also provide population estimates that carefully take into consideration the IR, population size and known quantities of sample to determine a range of respondents who would qualify for a survey within a target geography. We are big believers in running frequent feasibility tests to ensure no surprises once a project is in field.

15. What do you do if the project proves impossible for you to complete in field? Do you inform the sample buyer as to who you would use to complete the project? In such circumstances, how do you maintain and certify third party sources/sub-contractors?

While a survey is in field, Rep Data’s dedicated project managers monitor and send daily updates on progress against key metrics until fielding is completed. If the specs of a project come in differently than was anticipated during planning, there are several approaches we take to complete the project. If our experts believe there is another vendor that could be tapped to complete the project, we will partner with that vendor to find success or provide a direct recommendation/referral for the client. Rep Data only partners with GDPR-compliant, reputable panel companies and sample sources.

16. Do you employ a survey router or any yield management techniques? If yes, please describe how you go about allocating participants to surveys. How are potential participants asked to participate in a study?

Rep Data leverages tools that utilize API-integrated sampling, and none of the tools we currently use rely on router technology.

17. Do you set limits on the amount of time a participant can be in the router before they qualify for a survey?

Because Rep Data utilizes tools with API-integrated sampling to allocate surveys to respondents, participants are not spending any time in a router.

18. What information about a project is given to potential participants before they choose whether to take the survey or not? How does this differ by the sources you offer?

As part of our unbiased, agnostic sourcing approach, we use technology that allows hundreds of panels to provide surveys to their respondents. It is up to the individual panel exactly what information they provide. We engage with panels that tell, at minimum, potential respondents up-front how long the survey will take and how much they will make or be rewarded for taking the survey.

19. Do you allow participants to choose a survey from a selection of available surveys? If so, what are they told about each survey that helps them to make that choice?

Because Rep Data doesn’t own any panels, the vendors we source sample from are responsible for presenting surveys to respondents. Respondents complete screening questions to ensure that the survey is appropriate for them before entering.

20. What ability do you have to increase (or decrease) incentives being offered to potential participants (or sub-groups of participants) during the course of a survey? If so, can this be flagged at the participant level in the dataset?

Rep Data’s supply partners handle respondent incentives, which will vary in value and amount from project to project. Rewards generally include gift cards, loyalty rewards, charitable donations or cash.

21. Do you measure participant satisfaction at the individual project level? If so, can you provide normative data for similar projects (by length, by type, by subject, by target group)?

Because Rep Data doesn’t own any panels or have direct panelist/respondent relationships, we don’t have an avenue for measuring respondent satisfaction. However, we strive to source sample from partners and vendors that prioritize respondent experience, and actively manage it using metrics such as conversion rates, dropout rates, and quality of responses.

22. Do you provide a debrief report about a project after it has completed? If yes, can you provide an example?

Absolutely. Rep Data has a formal process in place to debrief clients on every project to track successes and areas for improvement. Our hands-on approach to every project continues post-project, and we have a checklist of items that we go through with each client to determine satisfaction. We also provide post-project satisfaction surveys to every client, and have consistently ranked with an NPS score of 80 or above.

Additionally, during fielding and post-field Rep Data provides access to reporting portals that provide metrics on study performance – LOI, IR, drop rate, mobile conversion, and toss rate are some of the metrics we track.

23. How often can the same individual participate in a survey? How does this vary across your sample sources? What is the mean and maximum amount of time a person may have already been taking surveys before they entered this survey? How do you manage this?

Our vendor partners manage this piece of the process, providing technology that deduplicates within a survey, survey group, or category by IP, participant ID or cookies. We have the ability to customize parameters that block respondents against associated surveys or industry categories to prevent respondents from repeating a survey.

We employ “predupe” technology to ensure that our panel or sample sources don’t send a potential respondent to a survey if that panelist has already seen the survey. Rep Data uses technology to prevent people from being in multiple surveys at the same time, and also employs tools that track a respondent’s rate of activity across the market research ecosystem, and can create timing thresholds on a per-project basis.

24. What data do you maintain on individual participants such as recent participation history, date(s) of entry, source/channel, etc? Are you able to supply buyers with a project analysis of such individual level data? Are you able to append such data points to your participant records?

Rep Data doesn’t own any panels, so we don’t have visibility into which surveys individual respondents are participating.

25. Please describe your procedures for confirmation of participant identity at the project level. Please describe these procedures as they are implemented at the point of entry to a survey or router.

Rep Data uses advanced digital fingerprinting and fraud identification technology that examines potential respondents before they are engaged in a survey, ensuring that the participant is not a bot, known fraudulent person or a duplicate. We collect real-time information on “threat level” before a survey is reached, based on past activity and external fraud databases, such as known e-commerce and adtech fraudsters.

26. How do you manage source consistency and blend at the project level? With regard to trackers, how do you ensure that the nature and composition of sample sources remain the same over time? Do you have reports on blends and sources that can be provided to buyers? Can source be appended to the participant data records?

Rep Data examines the desired audience and sets specific allocation parameters across several different sample sources, and can replicate on subsequent waves for tracker or ongoing studies. Sources can be appended to participant data records and provided to the client. Because we don’t own any proprietary panels or sample sources, we can help ensure representative sample and more diverse sourcing by gathering respondents from several sources for any individual project.

27. Please describe your participant/member quality tracking, along with any health metrics you maintain on members/participants, and how those metrics are used to invite, track, quarantine, and block people from entering the platform, router, or a survey. What processes do you have in place to compare profiled and known data to in-survey responses?

Rep Data employs technology that tracks a respondent’s rate of activity across the market research ecosystem, which is helpful in flagging and blocking professional or otherwise undesirable survey takers (e.g. survey cookie deletion), which in turn positively impacts data quality. While a survey is in field, we use tools to actively track a respondent’s engagement in real-time, automatically analyzing open-end responses and checking for proper grammar, response length, profanity, copy/paste, and other attributes.

28. For work where you program, host, and deliver the survey data, what processes do you have in place to reduce or eliminate undesired in-survey behaviours, such as (a) random responding, (b) Illogical or inconsistent responding, (c) overuse of item nonresponse (e.g., “Don’t Know”) (d) inaccurate or inconsistent responding, (e) incomplete responding, or (f) too rapid survey completion?

In addition to the tools mentioned above, the experts at Rep Data build logic into surveys to help eliminate undesired in-survey behaviors such as red herring or trap questions, and monitor behaviors like straight-lining or junk open-end responses. Our team also provides mid- and post-field data cleansing for every project, as part of our hands-on approach.

29. Please provide the link to your participant privacy notice (sometimes referred to as a privacy policy) as well as a summary of the key concepts it addresses.

To the extent we collect personal data from respondents, Rep Data relies on the privacy notice of our clients for whom we program surveys, either via a link or by any notices provided to Rep Data as part of the services provided.

30. How do you comply with key data protection laws and regulations that apply in the various jurisdictions in which you operate?

Rep Data has appropriate contractual obligations in place where required by law. We have developed policies and procedures to ensure information and security obligations are met as applicable.

How do you address requirements regarding consent or other legal bases for the processing personal data?

Depending on the services and/or project, Rep Data relies on the appropriate legal basis obtained by its suppliers and/or the consent language used as directed by its clients when programming their survey projects.

How do you address requirements for data breach response, cross-border transfer, and data retention?

Rep Data, to the extent applicable, has appropriate breach response processes. Rep Data’s clients are obligated to ensure cross-border transfers and data retention for any personal data collected as part of their projects as programmed.

Have you appointed a data protection officer?

No. To the extent data protection laws are applicable, the CEO has direct responsibility for maintaining Rep Data’s data protection and information security policies and procedures.

Rep Data’s suppliers do not allow for consent revision. To the extent Rep Data programs projects for its clients, the client provides the consent language they would like to use. To the extent applicable, Rep Data’s clients provide support to the respondent/data subjects. As mentioned above, we do not wholly own any sample source.

Rep Data acts as a fielding agent to survey researchers, procuring sample from reputable panels for market research studies.

32. How do you track and comply with other applicable laws and regulations, such as those that might impact the incentives paid to participants?

Rep Data works with a compliance consultant to track applicable laws.

33. What is your approach to collecting and processing the personal data of children and young people?

Rep Data, to the extent applicable, only collects personal data of children at the direction of its clients and pursuant to any instructions provided. Rep Data doesn’t collect any personally identifiable information on any respondent, of any age.

Do you adhere to standards and guidelines provided by ESOMAR or GRBN member associations?

Rep Data adheres to the standards and guidelines provided by ESOMAR and GRBN member associations.

How do you comply with applicable data protection laws and regulations?

Rep Data LLC has appropriate contractual obligations in place where required by law. We have developed policies and procedures to ensure information and security obligations are met as applicable.

34. Do you implement “data protection by design” (sometimes referred to as “privacy by design”) in your systems and processes? If so, please describe how. Data protection by design” (which may also be referred to as “privacy by design”) is an approach that requires the consideration of privacy and data protection issues at the design phase of any system, service, product or process and then throughout the lifecycle. Understanding a sample providers use or lack of use of “data protection by design” can help you understand its data protection compliance posture.

Rep Data does not develop systems and we only collect data elements as needed for each client’s specific project. Data protection and privacy regulation compliance is intrinsic to the way we do business.

35. What are the key elements of your information security compliance program? Rep Data LLC’s Information Security Program includes the following:

Rep Data LLC has implemented a Written Information Security Program (“WISP”) designed to protect information resources from a wide range of threats, to ensure business continuity and minimize business risk. Information security is achieved by implementing applicable policies, processes, procedures, controls, standards, guidelines, organizational structures and supporting technology.

The WISP and subsidiary policies are designed to govern the:

Acceptable Use Policy
Access Control Policy
Antivirus and Malware Policy
Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Policy
Data Classification Policy
Incident Management and Breach Response Policy
Email & Internet Usage Policy
Network Access Policy
Password Policy
Software Installation Policy
Vendor Management Policy

The WISP and subsidiary policies have been adopted and follow an annual review to ensure they are appropriately scoped and relevant to current threats, standards, and generally accepted information security practices.

Please specify the framework(s) or auditing procedure(s) you comply with or certify to. Does your program include an asset-based risk assessment and internal audit process? Information security frameworks such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2 are accepted and recognized frameworks for information security compliance.

Rep Data does have audit policies in place and anticipates auditing to begin in 2022.

36. Do you certify to or comply with a quality framework such as ISO 20252?

We are not ISO 20252 certified but we closely align with this framework.

37. Which of the following are you able to provide to buyers, in aggregate and by country and source?