We definitely want you to qualify for and complete all the surveys that you are invited to, but realistically that isn't going to happen as no-one can qualify for everything.
Explaining "How the research industry and surveys work" should help to clarify things. There are 3 main termination statuses - Duplicate, Quota full/fail, and Screener fail.
[ Duplicate ]
So there are a bunch of survey research companies and depending on the size of the project many of those companies may work together to fill the survey numbers. So if a person is a member of multiple survey companies they will likely get redirected as a "Duplicate" if they have already been identified as having attempted the survey.
Note: On the rare occasion, a survey will have a limit of one attempt/start and if anything breaks that session it will be marked as duplicate on subsequent attempts. We inform you of this requirement on the pre-survey notification page; If included, this is displayed prior to entering the actual survey.
[ Quota Full ]
At times members will qualify for a survey and still be redirected early; most surveys have set limits for the different target groups and once these limits have been reached further surveys will be returned as Quota full/fail. This normally happens after the screening section at the beginning of the survey.
[ Screened Out ]
Now, to be able to qualify for a survey the member needs to be identified as required for an open target group. We can help by using your registration info to select a group that may qualify for the survey, the rest is based on the member's responses to see if they are the required target group. If they are not the required target group then the survey will be redirected as a Screener fail.
Note:
Octopus Group have limited information regarding the screening criteria/evaluation, as we do not write the surveys all the screening is performed by the client's survey tool.
[ Other Reasons for Screening ]
- VPN's - If you use a VPN you can be automatically screened out as there is technology to identify this and some clients implement it.
- Out of country - If you are accessing from outside of the country you may also be screened as this can also be identified by the client tools.
- Control questions - Data quality is paramount, so there are often data checks to confirm questions are being read properly and answers are appropriate to the question. Sometimes the same question is asked later in the survey.
- Appropriate responses - Keyboard mashing, inappropriate language, written responses that don't answer the question, answering the same option repeatedly... etc will also be screened out and it is likely a warning will also be issued.
- Survey speeding - going through the survey too quickly will also be screened. Regardless of how fast you read or how good your connection speed is we have timed and provided the approximate survey length so the survey needs to take at least this long.
Note:
Octopus Group are different to most survey providers in that we don't write the surveys that we send invitations for, we work with almost every survey provider in Australia and they write the surveys, so if there are survey problems we need to communicate your experience to the client on your behalf.
“If you don’t get paid neither do we”. Our clients only pay for completed surveys and as we don’t write the surveys that is the only way we get paid.
If you believe there is an issue please contact support@octopusgroup.com.au so we can have the client investigate.