Paying Survey Respondents

Here is an interesting article about the surveys in US and whether or not the respondents should be payed.

Most of the time respondents are payed in Marketing Research and there has long been a concern about whether or not paying respondents will bias the surveys. What happens in official surveys is that respondents are really selected at random and therefore they do not choose to participate, they spend their time filing a non anticipated survey and therefore it seem to make sense that they should be recompensed. The argument goes that it is also fair that all tax payer pay for these official survey and the unlucky ones that are selected, the real contributors, should be rewarded, for they are making possible that all the official results from surveys are available.

Now, in Marketing Research, even Opinion Pools, things are different. Sample is usually on line and respondents choose to participate, often for the reward offered. If folks that are attracted by these rewards are somehow different from the others, then we may have a bias in the survey, which is quite complicated to be quantified. While the recompense may bring selection biases, it seems fair to assume that no recompense would no be fair and surveys would hardly be possible. Besides it also seems that in any case, payed respondents will answer surveys more reliably than if they were no payed as they get a sense of commitment if they are receiving money.

As the on line era dominates and change sampling theory we statisticians need to be more and more creative to handle the new challenges involved in releasing reliable results.