Market research can experience its own zombie-like virus through sample contamination. What is sample contamination? Much like it sounds, it's a sample of people who do not represent the traits of the intended population surveyed. Market research involves two groups of people - a sample and a population.
What is Sample Contamination?
Sample contamination occurs when the sample does not accurately reflect the population it's meant to represent. This can happen when individuals who shouldn't be part of the sample are included, leading to skewed results and inaccurate conclusions.
The Importance of Representative Samples
Let's say a company wants to launch a new widget product. The company wants to find out how appealing the new widget is to people across the country and understand their likelihood to purchase.
Ideally, the company would like to complete a telephone survey with every single resident in the country to fully understand the product's potential. Interviewing every single resident would be too expensive, take too long, and is impractical for a business.
Therefore, in many market research studies, surveying an entire population is not feasible.
Creating Samples in Market Research
Samples (or smaller portions of populations) are created in market research so insight can be gained and estimations can be made so data from the sample can be cast to the population.
For instance, the survey sample indicates 75% of people in our sample are likely to purchase the product, so the margin of error predicts anywhere from 72% to 78% of the population would be likely to purchase the product.
Understandably, it is critical that the sample be representative of the population. Much like a virus, sample contamination prevents the collection of healthy and reliable data.
Sources of Sample Contamination
Due to the prevalence of convenience samples, panels, and river sampling where anyone can opt-in to take a survey and in many cases share the survey link with others, ensuring your sample of completes matches your population is of critical importance.
If you plan on using social media to publicize your survey, contamination can grow quickly because friends can share with other friends, and so on. If your friends share common demographic or behavioral traits, your survey sample can become contaminated quickly.
For example, if the widget feasibility survey is shared on Facebook, chances are you will not get a strong response from the elderly where usage of Facebook is more limited than younger populations.
If your new widget product is targeted to males 65+, chances are your Facebook completes and your sample will not match that. As a result, your data will not be accurate.
Preventing Sample Contamination
Sample contamination can be limited through random sampling efforts.
For instance, if the widget company wanted to conduct a customer satisfaction survey with users of its prior versions, it could provide a market research firm with a random pull of 1,000 numbers from its 100,000 customers.
The random pull will ensure that the telephone survey will sample proportionately. However, since telephone surveys are becoming less popular and as the industry shifts to online and mobile platforms, sample contamination has become a larger concern.
Contact Our Market Research Company
At Drive Research, we perform rigorous data and screening checks to ensure your survey samples are free from contamination. Trust us to provide high-quality, reliable data for your market research needs. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you achieve accurate and actionable insights!
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George Kuhn
George is the Owner & President of Drive Research. He has consulted for hundreds of regional, national, and global organizations over the past 15 years. He is a CX-certified VoC professional with a focus on innovation and new product management.
Learn more about George, here.
