The online survey industry has created a complicated and opaque web of data outsourcing that can make it nearly impossible for researchers to know where their data come from and creates conditions that incentivize distracted and insincere survey responses.
We began wondering about survey data sourcing when we noticed that since 2018, the Cooperative Election Study (CES, formerly the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, CCES) has included data from Dynata, Critical Mix, and Prodege. … We then noticed that the 2020 AP VoteCast, another prominent election survey (conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago), also relied on multiple external data sources.
It turns out that this type of data outsourcing is ubiquitous. We partnered with Verasight, a survey firm with which we are both affiliated, to learn more about the online survey industry. CONTINUED
Peter K. Enns (Cornell) & Jake Rothschild (Verasight), 3Streams
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