Online Research Capabilities

NRG has been conducting online market research and opinion polling since 1996. Over the past ten years we have conducted hundreds of online surveys using client lists, recruited participants and panels. We have also conducted many online discussion groups among participants from around the world.

The use of online research has been growing rapidly in the past few years, and it has a number of advantages.

Advantages of Online Research

• respondents are more at ease sharing personal information online rather than sharing this information with an interviewer over the phone
• respondents can complete the survey at a time convenient for them
• respondents can take the time to give thoughtful responses to questions
• internet surveys are often more cost effective if online panel or existing e-mail lists are used
• surveys can be detailed and lengthy since respondents can complete the survey in multiple sessions
• surveys can be more complex and include pictures, sound and video
• clients can have real-time access to online results
• a large number of surveys can be conducted in a very short period of time

Online Services

At NRG we customize our online research solutions to meet our clients' specific needs for information and action. A number of the different services we offer organizations worldwide include:

• Online Survey – We direct respondents to Internet-based questionnaires. This is typically done by sending each potential respondent a unique link to the questionnaire. We can also advertise a general link that respondents can use to access the online survey. Our online survey tool has virtually no limitations. It combines the strengths of CATI programming design specifically for market research with powers of Java and HTML programming. The results of online surveys are available to clients in real time. Clients can view quotas and results for all survey questions as they are completed by respondents.

  For an example of NRG's online surveys please visit click on the link below.

  Online survey example

• Online Panels – NRG offers its clients access to online panels across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. We take great care in selecting the best panel for our clients' research requirements. Our panel members are selected from multiple sources, including RDD telephone recruiting. Our panels include general population residential sample and business sample, including professionals. We can target respondents by demographics, household composition, purchasing behaviour and other data.

• Custom Panels – We develop custom online panels for clients who wish to sample a population several times over a period of time or on a continuous basis. For example, an organization could recruit 3,000 customers, gather detailed information on these customers, and invite them to participate in several surveys each year. The benefits of this type of research are numerous. If used effectively, custom panels yield more in-depth information, and provide it more quickly and cost effectively than traditional methods.

• Online Discussion Boards and Focus Groups – In an online discussion board, research participants are recruited and are provided with unique link and password for a website. Typically, participants are instructed to log in to the site several times over a two or three day period. Participants respond to the moderators’ questions and comment on other participants’ answers. The moderator is able to add questions at any time and guide the discussions as required. End-users of the research are able to view the discussions as they happen. All the text from the discussions is stored in a database for review and analysis.

Cautionary Notes About Conducting Online Research

While the advantages of online research are numerous, using online methodologies improperly can lead to misleading results. The following are a few examples of the methodological precautions that must be addressed in an online research study:

• Sampled population – Because online survey research does not utilize random sampling, it is critical that the population that is sampled be similar (as much as possible) to the entire population of interest.  At NRG, there are a number of steps that are taken in each online study to ensure sampling is as accurate as possible.
• Use of incentives – Often incentives are used to attract respondents to participate in a survey. Researchers must be cautious to ensure the incentive does not motivate a segment of the research population more than other segments. This would result in biased research findings.

• Data quality – Because an interviewer is not asking questions and recording responses, we must take great care in the following areas:

  1. the survey must be unambiguous and simple to understand, as respondents will not be able to easily ask questions (although this issue can be addressed by the use of online help desks)
  2. during data analysis, it is important to identify and remove respondents who simply completed the survey without carefully reading questions and giving a truthful response.
• Data security – Because the data for online research are initially stored online, great care must be taken to ensure data are secure. For the client this is important from a competitive point of view and for privacy and confidentiality reasons.