How do you screen market research respondents?

Reach specific, pre-determined demographics and ensure your study is fully representative of your audience.

MRFGR have been targeting specific demographics for years. In fact, nearly every project requires some form of demographic targeting - whether to ensure a good representation throughout the fieldwork, or to maintain relevancy in demographic-based research studies.

First things first - what is meant by demographics?

Simply put, demography refers to the way our society is structured. It imagines the population as a jigsaw where lifestyles, characteristics and personal circumstance form pieces of a much larger region, totalling the overall representation. In market research, demographics are an ideal and effective method of pre-defining any audience to ensurer a clearer, narrowed focus on the people who matter most to your particular study.

Our sophisticated targeting tools allow us to reach people of specific demographics quickly. When respondents sign up to our user database, we ask them a set of demographic questions, which allows us to later target certain users based upon our client requirements.

So who can we target?

Mind the (generational) gap

Alongside gender, age is one of the more frequently specified demographics in a market research project. While most demographic requirements for age settle on seeking individuals within standard harmonised-3 brackets (please see below), we are able to target specific ages - so if, for example, you wanted to speak with only 21 year olds, we can recruit them!

- 0-15
- 16-24
- 25-34
- 35-44
- 45-54
- 55-64
- 65-74
- 75-84
- 85+

Using this information, we are also able to determine the exact generational-criteria for each individual. While we're always happy to take our client's lead and follow their definitions when requested, we tend to apply the following rules for each generation:

Baby Boomer Generation - Born between 1946-1964
Generation X (Baby Bust) - Born between 1965-1979
Xennials - Born between 1975-1985
Millennials, Generation Y, Gen Next - Born between 1980-1994
iGen / Gen Z - Born between 1995-2012
Gen Alpha - Born between 2013-2025

As a small aside, targeting individuals under the age of 16 is possible but we always reach this audience through parents or legal guardians, allowing us to collect necessary consent where required and abide by the MRS guidelines.

Gender Identity

We target individuals based upon the gender they identify as - while many of our participants identify as either male or female, there is a third, "Other" option which allows them to manually enter an identity if they so chose.

Academics, Apprentices, and Straight-To-Work individuals

Our education level targeting is based upon the highest level of achieved qualification, as per the 2011 UK census:

- No formal qualifications
- 1-4 GCSEs, Scottish Standard Grade or equivalent qualifications
- 5 or more GCSEs, Scottish Higher, Scottish Advanced Higher or equivalent qualifications
- Apprenticeships (England, Wales and Northern Ireland only)
- 2 or more A-levels, HNC, HND, SVQ level 4 or equivalent qualifications
- First or higher degree, professional qualifications or other equivalent higher education qualifications.
- Other vocational / work related qualifications and non-UK / foreign qualifications (England, Wales and Northern Ireland only)

The rich and the not-so rich

Income can give an extremely important view of your consumers - it indicates what they're likely to spend, the type of lifestyle they're likely to live, and ultimately, whether your product or service is a viable interest to them.

Whether you're looking at household income, personal income, pre-tax, or disposable - each one has a significant amount to say.

JAM
Coined by the UK government, the JAMs - the Just About Managing - are families who, regardless of earnings, have low savings or disposable incomes. They are typically not degree education (although this doesn't rule them out completely if they are), and while able to stay on top of their bills and finances, they worry about keeping up with the costs of living.

HENRYS
The High Earners Not Rich Yet's or, 'the rich but broke' are individuals who are usually younger (within the millennial generation), that tend to be earning a 6-figure salary and living an expensive lifestyle to boot. Despite this, they are living paycheque to paycheque with relatively low savings. They differ from JAMs because while both have low savings, HENRY's have larger disposable incomes and aren't concerned about financial difficulties.

HNWI
The HNWI's have a HH income of £100,000+ with substantial savings and disposable income, along with investable assets.

The BAME

It's imperative that customers don't narrow their focus when it comes to ethnicities - skew your research sample too much towards White British, and you risk alienating ethnic minorities who make a large and impact on your business.

The BAME refers to Black, Asian, or other Ethnic Minorities. We are able to target the following ethnic groups:

White or White British
Asian or Asian British: Indian
Asian or Asian British: Pakistani
Asian or Asian British: Bangladeshi
Asian or Asian British: Chinese
Asian or Asian British: Other Asian
Black or Black British
Mixed or Multiple:
Other (please state)

Living Situation
In demography, when we look at a person's living situation, we're actually looking at several things: who they live with, what type of set-up they have, whether that property is owned, rented, part-owned, and the length of time they're expected to live in that situation.

Using this information, we are able to target a multitude of demographics:

- Single Occupiers
- Empty nesters (parents who's child(ren) have 'flown the coop')
- Nesters or pre-family (couples who are looking to have children)
- Married and settled
- Families (of various sizes)
- Living with parents

We can then drill down further to target demographics from the above who are also living in a:

- Owned property
- Mortgaged property
- Rented property
- Social rented property
- Within another arrangement - sofa surfing, not a bill payer, no permanent residence, etc.

Demographics are a perfect tool for making sure that you're speaking to the right audience. Using MRFGR's demographic targeting system, we're able to put our client's in touch with their desired demographic, fast. Get in touch today and discuss your requirements with the team further.

There are three different categories of survey type, these include ‘paid’, ‘prize’ and ‘fun’ surveys. As you can probably guess ‘paid’ surveys allow you to accumulate points which in turn can be exchanged for Amazon vouchers. On completion of ‘prize’ surveys respondents are entered into prize draws in addition to adding prize points to their account. ‘Fun Surveys’ are surveys that do not provide payment or prizes but do accumulate 'participation' points, which like the prize points ensures the respondent is given priority - assuming they have screened correctly - in terms of being selected for focus groups, depth interviews, workshops and the like (which usually provide cash incentives).

You will either have a notification/invitation to take part in an online survey in your personal survey section of mrfgr.com and/or you will be emailed with the requisite details.

An online market research survey is generally the same as any other traditional survey with the exception that it is online and can be completed on your computer or through most mobile devices.

You will either have a notification/invitation to join a panel in your personal profile section of mrfgr.com or you will be emailed with the requisite details.

A market research panel comprises of a number of people that fulfill a particular criteria, for instance, you maybe asked to join a panel of shoppers who’s main supermarket is Tesco. Every time the client then needs to ask something of the panel i.e. you, you will be contacted by MRFGR to take part in the associated research project and paid accordingly for each project.

Panels can be used in respect of focus groups, depth/one-to-one interviews, workshops, co-creation workshops, online surveys, mystery shopping, product testing and much more.

You can join the market research bulletin boards, forums and chat rooms through your control panel (when such projects are available). You will only see the links when such projects are live and fit your respondent type.

If you agree to attend a market research project but fail to attend you will automatically be excluded from any future research requirements as we operate a “one strike and you're out” policy. You may think this sounds harsh but please consider that not only have you effectively ruined the research project (a certain number of people are always required to attend to voice their opinion), we do not receive any fees from the client, and you will have also taken the place of someone else who would have willingly attended. If you are in any doubt about your attendance to a research project you must call the office as soon as possible so we can attempt to find you a replacement.

You will be told via email and if selected you will be supplied with a confirmation letter - also sent to you via email - with all the required details to attend the research.

Incentives refer to the payment received for partaking in a market research project. The incentive amount and type is totally dependent on the research project at hand, however most incentives are usually paid in cash with the exception of the incentives associated with online surveys where these are paid in vouchers.

Occasionally incentives can be in the form of product give-a-ways, vouchers, direct electronic transfer payments to your account or cheques.

Firstly you need to register your interest (it’s totally free with no catches) here.

Once you’ve signed up and completed your details you will be informed by email (sometimes by phone in urgent situations) of research projects that will be suitable for you. The emails will provide full details of the requirements included ‘incentives’ (see below for an explanation of respondent incentives) and if you’re still unsure you’re always welcome to call the office.

Market research respondent recruitment refers to the recruitment of individuals who would like to take part in market research i.e. respondents.

The MRFGR online survey system has the most available question types of any other company in the market today. These include:

- Array;
- Array (5 point choice);
- Array (10 point choice);
- Array ( Yes/No/Uncertain);
- Array (Increase/Same/Decrease);
- Array by column;
- Array dual scale;
- Array (Numbers);
- Array (Text);
- Date;
- File upload;
- Gender;
- Language switch;
- Numerical input;
- Multiple numerical input;
- Ranking;
- Text display;
- Yes/No;
- Equation;
- Multiple choice;
- Multiple choice with comments;
- 5 point choice;
- List (Dropdown);
- List (Radio);
- List with comments;
- Short free text;
- Long free text;
- Huge free text;
- Multiple short text;

In addition to these question types the system also supports complex logic and variables and the ability to upload images, sound and video. The survey platform can literally cater for any survey design and/or requirement.

We always advise incentives to complete surveys unless the survey respondent views the survey as important to them (for example, the respondent may be complaining about local council initiatives so their views are important to them and so will not need incentivising).

Incentives for online surveys generally come in two forms, monetary payment (distributed using a points system where respondents can trade in points for monetary vouchers for Amazon) or prize incentives. Monetary payment is usually the preferred incentive by respondents as it's guaranteed and immediate, whereas allocating a prize to a survey - although used in 50% of instances - generally leads to a much lower and slower response rate, especially those prizes that are small in value.

Surveys have a come along way since the use of the older more traditional method of print surveys. The introduction of online market research surveys has provided several benefits over the more traditional print based surveys including:

- extremely fast delivery of the survey to a large amount of potential respondents;
- the facility to receive responses/results almost immediately once delivered;
- a far cheaper method of delivering surveys (no postage to pay, less administration and management);
- a more reliable method of survey delivery (you know instantly if there are any delivery problems with the online survey);
- more popular with respondents and hence a higher response rate;
- far easier to provide incentives for completing the survey (if incentives are required).

If you have a specialist panel requirement MRFGR can generally create and management any panel that you desire. Be it high level legal professionals i.e. barristers or solicitors, high net worth business executives, or a patient panel made up of diabetics, nothing is impossible.

A market research/consumer panel is typically a select number of respondents that you can access at any time that match a specific screener type i.e. 100 respondents aged between 25 and 45, with a household income of £40,000 that shop at Tescos.

MRFGR can create consumer panels very quickly as all our respondents are pre-screened across a broad array of categories.

Yes, this is a specialist service that enables the client to conduct online market research under their own brand. For a quote please call or email the London office.

Market research bulletin boards, forums and chat rooms are simply online methods of conducting research by promoting - to a certain degree - anonymized discussion. They can be performed in realtime or over a period of days, weeks or months.

A market research viewing facility is a purpose built venue for conducting focus group discussions and depth interviews. Generally the main difference between a viewing facility and a regular venue such as a hotel meeting room is that the viewing facility will have a one-way-mirror that allows the discussions/interviews to be unobtrusively viewed live by the clients in addition to having built in recording facilities to record the groups/interviews (whereas if a recording was required in a standard meeting room - although possible - it's a little more problematic in that the moderator will need to arrive earlier, set the camera up, ensure it's in a good position, and test the recording).

When using a general meeting room it’s generally not advisable to have a client in the same room as the focus group respondents, as you usually find that the respondents can be put off by their attendance and will not be forthcoming with their opinions.

A translator is someone that translates text where an interpreter is someone that interprets speech. Rarely you will find someone that is both a translator and interpreter as they have very different skill sets.

The main consideration when getting transcriptions of your groups is to consider the transcriber. If multiple people are speaking at the same time, or have heavy accents, or simply the audio recording is of poor quality the transcriber will inevitably have problems in transcribing the focus group. Make sure only one person speaks at a time, there are no background noises and your recording is of a suitable quality (surprisingly some market research viewing facilities have terrible sound recordings).

As discussed above, respondent incentives are a key element of ensuring good respondent attendance. However, even with the best incentives out there, without an effective respondent recruitment team there’s little chance of a good turnout. MRFGR are the best in the industry in ensuring respondent attendance and in 95% of projects are proud to boast 100% attendance - and still a record 90% attendance in those small 5% of cases.

We go to great lengths to ensure not only quality screened respondents but respondents that turn-up to your research and in a timely manner (respondents are always asked to arrive 15 minutes before the actual focus group commences). Unlike our competitors we ensure that we call the respondent on at least three occasions leading up to the group to ensure their continued interest and to assess their reliability. This includes a telephone discussion on final screening selection, a call a few days before the group and a call on the morning of the group. Additionally, as a further insurance measure we also ensure - at no extra charge - that we have quality, screened reserve respondents in the unlikely instance that someone should cancel. These reserve respondents are also asked their location in respect of the group, the time it would take for them to travel to the venue in addition to being asked what would be the latest time they could be contacted to ensure their attendance in the event of someone cancelling. No one else in the industry provides this level of service to ensure full respondent turnouts.

This is a very important question. If the incentive’s too low you’ll have an issue not only in raising respondent interest to the market research project but also ensuring a good respondent turnout/participation. On the other hand if you pay too much you’ll be unnecessarily eating into your project budget.

The best way to determine the correct incentive is to put yourself in the shoes of the respondent. What would it take for you to attend a focus group or to take part in an online survey? Particularly in respect of focus groups, consider what incentive would ensure your attendance. Would you still attend if a better opportunity presented itself - perhaps your friends have asked you out for drink? What if it was raining and you were coming by bus or train? There are many obstacles that can prevent a respondent’s attendance, but if the incentive’s good enough this should be enough to overcome them (in addition to the effective management of the recruitment process by the highly specialised MRFGR respondent recruitment team).

Incentives are rewards that are paid to respondents for participating in a market research project. There are generally three incentive types, (1) cash, (2) cheque/bank transfer or (3) vouchers/product give-a-ways. In 99% of instances we would always recommend paying market research respondents in cash once they have completed their research (please note this is not a viable option for online surveys and instead vouchers or prizes are usually issued), so in instances of focus groups the market research participants should only be paid at the end of the group (not ‘before’ like most of the other agencies attest to).

From many years of experience, generally if you offer cheque or bank transfer not only will it cause a headache in terms of administration but respondents are less likely to be interested in the research and are also more likely to drop out at the last minute should they have already agreed to the research. Similarly, vouchers or product give-aways are equally frowned upon by respondents and are generally only effective as an incentive if the voucher or product is of substantial value - a good gauge is to consider a cash figure and then add an equivalent voucher/product value of at least 50%, if not 100%.

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The recruitment cost of a respondent type is generally dependent on three variables, (1) the time frame to recruit, (2) the level of difficulty in terms of the screening requirement/respondent type required, and (3) the number of respondents required (large scale respondent recruits can qualify for discounts depending on certain factors).

For a quick no obligation respondent recruitment quote (we can usually turnaround a quote within minutes of the request) please call or email the office.

Consider your market research project carefully and determine what you want to achieve from the research. Generally, your ideal respondent type will be someone that is either a current customer/user of your product/service or someone that you want to be a customer or user. Once you have identified the respondent type/s it’s highly probable that you’ll then want to break these down further into other identifiable areas. Such areas of consideration may include:

- respondent age;
- respondent gender;
- respondent race;
- respondent income;
- respondent education;
- respondent working status;
- respondent location;
- respondent usage/purchase frequency of the product or service;
- the respondents use of competitor products or services;

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The method of respondent recruitment is very much dependent on the project at hand. Generally, we utilise several respondent recruitment methods, including in order of importance:

(1) Ongoing advertising of the MRFGR website (directing potential participants to the market research registration page) and it's various project requirements for certain types of people to participate in focus groups, depth interviews, co-creation workshops, product testing, audience participation, mystery shopping, etc.

(2) Specialist 'cold-start' research in respect of difficult briefs/hard-to-find people, where the team closely consider the project and plan a specialist recruitment strategy, and actively recruit those individuals through their work places, social media, colleagues/friends, etc.

(3) Specialist recruiters who have been trained in the 'MRFGR recruitment way' and who are closely monitored and recruits stringently checked (all respondents are called and re-screened).