United Kingdom (English)As a member of Ipsos iSay, you may have noticed that we sometimes ask personal questions. They might ask you about your age, where you live, or even about your lifestyle. It might seem nosy, but these questions are really important for good research. Here, we’ll explain why Ipsos wants to know more about you, as well as what you think.
Personal questions help us know that the people we are surveying are a good mix that represents the real world.
Understanding the real world
Firstly, personal questions help us know that the people we are surveying are a good mix that represents the real world. By looking at age, gender, location, and lifestyle, we can compare our results to statistics about the population of the country or area we’re looking at. If the mix of people we’re asking questions to is a good match to the real world, then our survey results are more likely to be right.
Getting to know our community
We can also use the answers to those personal questions to understand more specific points about the topic of the survey. For example, if we run a survey about shopping, we might be able to find different trends for people from different age groups, or who live in different places. Without asking about these, we would only be able to answer about everyone. We might miss interesting things about our Ipsos iSay community.
Finally, we often run surveys which are meant for smaller groups of the population. If we’re asking about products for young adults, we want to know that we’re asking young adults. The personal questions we ask help us to know that we are.
Using data in research
Of course, we know that it can sometimes feel uncomfortable to answer these questions. Ipsos understands how important people’s privacy is and we follow some very strict rules. The personal data you give us can never be used to identify you as a person. We tend to report our findings in big groups – for example, saying that 25% of people told us they liked to shop in a certain way – so your answers can’t be seen by themselves.
Often, you can choose not to answer a question in a survey - and if you think the questions are too personal, you can stop taking part at any time.
In summary, even though it might feel like we’re snooping, personal questions help us do better research! Why not take a look at the surveys available to you now?
