FAQ's - page 1/4

What's in it for MyVoice? How do they make money?
Our clients pay us to carry out market research for them. If we use an example of say, a business who is thinking of spending £5 million on designing, manufacturing, advertising and distributing a new product, they'd be a bit remiss if they didn't actually bother to find out if people are likely to buy the thing! We design and programme questionnaires, send them to our panel, and then provide the client with the results when we have collected all the data. We charge depending upon how many people we interview, how difficult those people are to find, and how long a survey is. We reward our members for doing the surveys, then we have things like rent, salaries, software, hardware, telephones etc to pay for. Anything left over is profit, most of which we re-invest in the business.

What do MyVoice expect from me?
To be honest, all we really care about is that if you do decide to respond to a survey, you are honest, and take your time. We really want to know what you think. If people regularly go too fast, or give inconsistent answers, then we figure they are not serious about the work we do, and we will stop asking their opinion. Although we try to make our surveys easy to complete, and lighthearted when we can, they are meant to get at the truth.

Do I have to do every survey?
Not at all. Obviously, if you never do any, we'd assume you weren't interested, and stop sending them to you. But you are under no obligation to take part. The more questionnaires you complete, the quicker you will accumulate points, of course, but we would rather you enjoyed the experience. And you wouldn't enjoy it if you felt unreasonable pressure to participate.

Who is in your panel? Are there any restrictions on joining?
Every sort of person is in our panel. We don't have anyone under 18, but there is no upper age limit. One restriction we do enforce is that you are only allowed to join the panel once. If you had 2 IDs in our community, then the risk is that you take the same survey twice. If you answered both the same way, then the data would be skewed. If you answered differently, it means you weren't telling the truth on at least one occasion, and there'd be no point to counting your data.

The only other thing that we need to say is that the MyVoice panel is a UK-only community. There is nothing to stop you joining if you live elsewhere, but for now at least, you would not receive any survey invitations. You could still visit the site, and do any instant polls or profiling surveys there, but you could not claim a voucher. If you did somehow accumulate the points and receive a voucher, you'd have to come to the UK to spend it!

What's the worst thing about MyVoice?
If you worked here, you'd know that the worst thing about MyVoice is waiting for Ian to make the tea. You would die of thirst. But from a panelist perspective, things are not that bad! Judging from the letters we receive, the main bone of contention seems to be the number of survey invitations people receive. Many people want to do as many as they can but we don't like to overwhelm our members with emails, so you should never be inundated. And even if we didn't care, best practice in market research recommends limiting the number of questionnaires any individual completes - we are after "normal" people and doing nothing but fill in surveys is probably not entirely "normal" behaviour.

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