GRIT report finds clients of research consulting prioritize data quality and service above all else

The 2023 GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) Report over the past several years ranks data quality consistently as the top priority when selecting suppliers. The 2022 GRIT Report shows that 80% say data quality is a key priority (and most important decision factor) followed by 53% saying service levels.

It is very normal for Socratic to omit and replace ~20% of consumer sample and ~40% of business sample. We don’t always make this known because we just consider this good research practice.

Yet, given the importance of data quality, I wanted to share the steps that Socratic takes to ensure the highest data quality. These steps occur on every Socratic project.

1. We constantly monitor and control sample sources using Socratic’s Panel Fraud Index™ (PFI). This is an aggregated measure of overall quality of panelists that a panel company delivers prior to Socratic cleaning out bad actors. We publish this information weekly.

2. Socratic’s Fraud Risk Score™ (FRS) is a tool that feeds the PFI. Socratic performs device fingerprinting tracking on every survey respondent entering our survey platform using over 300 data points about the participant’s device. We also evaluate IP Reputation using real-time lookups. This allows us to instantly determine the reputation and risk potential of a respondent and flag suspicious respondents for further review or auto-terminate their survey activity. Click for more info.

3. Additionally, Socratic regularly applies technology controls including CAPTCHA bot checks and programmable checks like pattern recognition and completion time.

4. Our surveys always include at least one survey design control like attention validity checks, convergent/divergent validity checks, or gamified articulation.

5. Socratic also applies automated controls on open-end text on every project that checks for duplicate open-end responses, gibberish, and quality ratings.

6. The sum of these steps leads to automatic replacement of respondents or flags on respondent-level data for our Research Directors and Project Directors manually review.

Our brand promise is to deliver irreplaceable value as a research partner and our testament to this promise is our tenure and partnership with over half the Fotune 500 companies to deliver market research worldwide.