Are Interviews Costing £0.08 a Waste of Money? Reviewing Google Surveys for 'Wisdom of the Crowd' Projects. (March 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Roughton, G.W.; Mackay, Iain
• Is Part Of: International journal of market research. Volume 59:Number 2(2017)
• Page Start: 199
• Page End: 220
• Publication Date: 2017-03
• Subjects: Marketing research -- Periodicals; 658.8305
• DOI: 10.2501/IJMR-2017-015
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1470-7853

Abstract

This paper investigates whether a 'wisdom of the crowd' approach might offer an alternative to recent political polls that have raised questions about survey data quality. Data collection costs have become so low that, as well as the question of data quality, concerns have also been raised about low response rates, professional respondents and respondent interaction. There are also uncertainties about self-selecting 'samples'. This paper looks at more than 100 such surveys and reports that, in five out of the six cases discussed, £0.08p interviews delivered results in line with known outcomes. The results discussed in the paper show that such interviews are not a waste of money.