Surveys are a set of questions that ask respondents to give their opinion on a specific topic, from advertisements to products from the automobile and the movie industry to technology and consumer products.

Original article: http://hubpages.com/hub/All-you-need-to-know-about-Online-Surveys

Surveys are under the quantitative research department of the market research industry. Surveys can take the form of street interviews, telephone interviews, mall interviews and Internet online surveys.

Therefore, quantitative research surveys ask questions and give the respondent a set of closed options that must be chosen. By insuring that the researchers control the choices, the completed survey can by quantified and translated to how many different statistical analysis the client or market research firm is willing to study the data.

Below is an example of a survey question.

What is your favorite cola drink? Please choose one.

1. Coke
2. Pepsi
3. Sprite
4. Fanta
5. Don’t know
6. Other (Please Specify)_______

What are online surveys and why do companies use them?

Online surveys are an outgrowth of telephone surveys. The difference being that it’s on the Internet.

By joining an online survey company, you will be able to accrue incentive rewards as real money or some kind of gift card or prize after x number of dollars you’ve earned from completing online surveys.

Companies use online surveys because the turnaround is fast, fairly cheap compared to other research methods and can target multiple regions in the world and have raw data to be analyzed within a day to a week once the invitations are sent to the database members.

Online surveys typically are between 10 to 30 minutes. Some surveys that contain videos of commercials, television programs or movies may go up to 60 minutes.

Original article: http://hubpages.com/hub/All-you-need-to-know-about-Online-Surveys

Legitimate market research firms including online research panels will not ask for your Social Security number or any financial accounts. If they do, I would be suspicious and move on.

An online survey company will ask for your interests, lifestyle, favorite brands and products, etc. You will be asked for your age, gender, race and ethnicity, where you live, your family, what you read, any kind health issues, profession and a lot more personal stuff that you may skip.

However, by not giving the online survey company as much information about yourself, the less your profile will be tagged when a new project arrives that specifies a specific person.

Remember, a legitimate online survey company will ask a lot of personal questions about your lifestyle but they will not ask for your Social Security number! There is no legitimate reason for them to ask for your Social Security number.

The survey company is asking for a fee to join their database, is this for real?

If a company is asking for a fee or any kind of payment to join their database, move on. Legitimate companies want people to join their database, it would not be in their best interest to make people pay to join their database. The more people in their database, the better!

The more members gives them bragging rights in their proposals and marketing campaigns as being the biggest with the most people in their respective database and more people available to take surveys! If a market research company can use just one vendor to complete an entire project, the better!

In addition to not needing to pay a fee to join a company's database, I would also be wary of companies saying they will pay you $30, $50 and $100 to join there panel without researching the company's background. I'm paranoid, so I'd ignore them all together.

If a company starts to sell you subscriptions or anything at all that requires you to pay, then it's not a legitimate survery company. Delete your profile and leave.

Just remember that all that is needed is your personal information, which is the most important thing you bring to the table.

Original article: http://hubpages.com/hub/All-you-need-to-know-about-Online-Surveys

Here's a few online survey companies that are legitimate and have been in the industry for a few years. By going to their website, you should be able to join the database. The only exception being e-rewards where supposedly you need to be invited by one of their partners to join the e-rewards database.

http://www.surveyspot.com/

http://www.e-rewards.com

http://www.greenfield-ciaosurveys.com/

http://join.zoompanel.com/zoompanel/?master_id=18&menu=Join+Now

http://www.harrispollonline.com/AdultReg.asp?lang=1

Surveyhead looks like a new online survey panel that is run by the guys who owned goZing and later sold their company to Greenfield online. Looks like they are back and working on another online survey panel. http://www.surveyhead.com/

Surveypolice is an interesting site that gathers complaints and ranks online survey companies by user input. Go to this site to join more online survey companies and see user reports of each online survey company.

http://www.surveypolice.com/

Online survey companies with a global presence

Here's a list of online companies that are based outside of the United States. I don't know much about these companies, so do your research. These online companies have a focus on one or two regions in the world, however, they should let you register if your outside of their primary territories.The previous list of online companies also have a global presence.

Toluna has a big presense in the UK and Europe.

http://uk.toluna.com/Register.aspx

Planet Pulse focuses on the Asian region.

http://www.planet-pulse.net/live/index.php

embrain seems to have a presence only in Korea and China. I couldn't find an English version of their website.

Korean embrain site - http://www.panel.co.kr/

Chinese embrain site - http://www.panelpower.cn/

Why haven’t I received any surveys since I signed up?

Remember all those personal questions you were asked to answer? By answering those questions you are allowing the online survey company to target you for specific online surveys. The more information about your personal life in the database, the more likely you will be chosen for a research study.

Therefore, the more questions you answer will be the deciding factor on how much you will be pulled from the database for an online survey. This is one of those times when it’s in your best interest to tell the truth. If you have any medical issues, I suggest you put that on your profile. Medical and health issues are a big draw for Pharmaceutical firms doing online research. Does your family have a history of high blood pressure? Put that that info in your profile. Do you have some kind of dysfunction or were you operated on? Put that in your profile!

The more info given about yourself, the greater the possibility of being tagged to take an online survey.

I was disqualified or terminated in the middle of a survey! I was ripped off!

Original article: http://hubpages.com/hub/All-you-need-to-know-about-Online-Surveys

Being disqualified or terminated from an online survey does two things.

It pisses you off because you took your time to take the survey and was terminated for some reason and didn’t get any incentive reward if you had completed it. Also, no one tells you why you were disqualified.

The only way that the online survey company gets any money from the client is by getting people to complete the survey. This is why they try to target specific profiles that match the survey specifications. So now that you were terminated, the online survey company will have to send another batch of emails to more people in the database that match the project specifications. If there are no more respondents who fit the profile, worst-case scenario will be to tell the client that they cannot get more people from their database to take the survey and will lose out on the revenue and lose client trust.

One thing to remember is that online survey companies do not create the surveys. They’re basically the middlemen that have the database of people willing to take the surveys. If you are disqualified in the middle of the survey, there could be many reasons why – a sub-quota or you could have been terminated.

What’s a difference between a sub-quota and being terminate?

Let’s look at an imaginary project that was just given to an online survey company.

1. Project Manager looks at the respondent specifications for the project and looks for them in the database.
2. Gathers the respondents who fit the profile that is needed for the survey and sends the email to x number of people in the database that fit the profile.
3. If the survey is easy and doesn’t have too many “quotas”, the person receiving the invitation literally has minutes to click on that link to the survey and complete it, otherwise everyone will have completed the survey and all the quotas would have been filled.

Every survey has a specific number of respondents that are needed. That main quota is the total completes. This is the total number of respondents needed to finish the online survey. The online company may have to send out thousands of invitation emails to people in their database to get a complete of 200 respondents if there are multiple sub-quotas.

Sub-quotas are the number of respondents needed for specific questions. Most sub-quotas are focused on age, gender, region or income. If a client is looking to do a survey on car owners, there may be a sub-quota for the number of respondents who own a Toyota or Honda because of the sheer number of people who own cars from those two companies.

A terminate is a choice the client doesn’t see as being relevant to the outcome of the study.

For example:

A survey is focusing on Japanese beer drinkers, primarily people who drink Asahi Super Dry. Below is a question that has terminate choices.

Q1. What is your favorite foreign beer?

1. Heineken [Terminate]
2. Tsingtao [Terminate]
3. Dos Equis [Terminate]
4. Asahi Super Dry
5. Guinness [Terminate]
6. Other (Specify) [Terminate]

The online survey will make sure to terminate any respondent who chooses any beer other than Asahi Super Dry, the only Japanese beer on that list.

For guys outside of the United States, the number of online surveys are pretty low compared to the online surveys sent to participants within the borders of the United States.

If you apply to an online survey company such as toluna, planet-pulse. surveyspot or even surveyhead, there's a good chance you will get surveys in-frequently.

However, when you do receive surveys there's a greater likelihood of successfully completing the questionnaire due to the limited number of participants in your country!

It’s very difficult to get rich off online surveys. If you are in the database of a few companies, you should be able to earn more than a few dollars a day. That’s on the premise that your profile is being targeted heavily by an industry.

Original article: http://hubpages.com/hub/All-you-need-to-know-about-Online-Surveys

Let’s look at the best scenario.

You wrote down in your profile that you have a problem with your sex life. You take Viagra or Cialis.

Multiple pharmaceutical firms are doing online research on sexual dysfunction and your profile has been tagged to receive an invitation link to the survey. You are a member of multiple online databases and you receive at least 3 different invitations to take a health surveys each day.

In a span of a month you complete 90 health surveys each lasting 30 minutes and each worth $10 when completed. That’s $900 in one month!

That’s pretty good right? The best-case scenarios are always good!

In real life, there’s a good chance you will be terminated, disqualified or some other technical problem that might occur and you won’t be able to complete the survey.

Also, once you notice that invitation email for a study and click on the link to the survey, you might already be too late and the survey might have already been closed. In most cases you are one of thousands of people who have received that specific email to take a survey and if you don't act fast, by the time you have time, the survey might already be closed.

A $10 incentive reward is also pretty very high for an online survey. Actually, I'd say an incentive above $5 is above normal for an average person taking online surveys.

Original article: http://hubpages.com/hub/All-you-need-to-know-about-Online-Surveys

Reward incentives for online surveys are normally from $1 to $5 per complete survey, dependent upon the length and topic of the survey. Professionals, executives, doctors, and people with medical conditions are paid more depending on the topic of the survey.