Introduction

Collecting feedback via the Internet gives tremendous possibilities. You can interview your employees and your customers, and conduct surveys towards your markets, for example mapping the profiles of the people visiting your web site. Within the Market Research industry, many agencies also use Panels to collect data and conduct research.

A panel is a group of people, possibly several million, who have agreed to be available to answer surveys. When a prospective panelist first registers in the panel, he/she will typically answer a registration survey that will log personal and other information such as work-related and household details. This information will allow the research company to pick out of the panel samples of panelists who are suitable to answer particular surveys. For example, if you are conducting a marketing survey for a client company that manufactures dog food, you will probably wish to include only dog-owners in your sample. You can import people directly into the panel if you already have their information.

In Forsta Plus you can build a library of panelist interfaces, called Panel Portals, through which registered and potential panelists can read about your panels and register themselves if necessary. Those who are already registered (members) can log into the Panel Portal to answer new or previously started surveys, view their survey list, update their profile, view their points etc. All these actions are conducted via the same interface.

A Panel can also be used by a company to hold information about its employees and/or customers. You can then send specific people surveys based on the information in the Panel. For example, if you want to send a seminar registration survey to all employees working in a particular city and a particular department, and who have not already attended that seminar, then the panel will give you a sample containing the people matching these criteria, and upload the list to the seminar registration survey.

Forsta Plus contains three "grades" of panel application; Basic panels, Standard Panels and Professional Panels.

• Basic Panels - this simple functionality is included as a part of the Professional Authoring application. The Basic Panels functionality is described in the separate Professional Authoring documentation.
• Standard Panels - this is a reduced set of the Professional Panels functionality. If you have a Standard Panels license, use this documentation for information on Standard Panels functionality but be aware that much of the information contained herein will not apply to you.
• Professional Panels - the full panels functionality.

This documentation explains the full Professional Panels functionality. Note that this guide should be read in conjunction with the Professional Authoring documentation, which explains how to create and set up the surveys. Be aware that some functionality described herein, for example FTP import, may need additional licensing.

Note: The Professional Panel functionality is purchased as a separate add-on module within Forsta Plus.

Important
The browser manufacturers’ interpretations of web standards may vary, and this can result in slight differences across the different browsers. Forsta therefore recommends that users test their surveys, Panel Portal projects, and Reportal Viewer/Public Reports, on different browsers to ensure they look and function as expected/required on the different browsers.

CATI Support

Professional Panels supports CATI channel surveys, allowing sample uploads to appear in the CATI system for interviewing.

Three scheduling options are available for respondent uploads for CATI-enabled surveys. When sample is loaded from Professional Panel, the system will use the default value (No scheduling) and there is no option to change this.