In this article
A Sample is a group of people who have been selected from a Panel to participate in a particular survey. The members of the sample will have specific characteristics that make them suitable for that survey.
When a person agrees to be a panelist, they complete a questionnaire to provide their personal details and other information that the survey company (your company) may require. There could be hundreds of questions. These could include such details as where the panelist lives, whether they drive and/or own a car and if so what type, whether they have any children and if so how many, their ages, sexes, what types of schools they attend, whether they have any pets and if so what types etc. The panelist’s answers to these questions are entered into a database and later used to determine the panelist’s suitability to participate in a particular survey. For example, if a company that manufactures dog-food has asked for a survey to be conducted to analyze dogs’ preferences in a particular town, there is not much point in including a panelist who does not own a dog or who lives in a different town.
Additional criteria, such as whether the prospective panelist has recently participated in a survey of a particular category, or participated in a survey of any category, within a specified period, can also be included in the sample selection process. These “exclusion” criteria will help to prevent panelists becoming overworked and perhaps bored with answering surveys. You can also use similar functionality to re-include potential panelists who were previously excluded automatically for other reasons.
Forsta’s Sample Management function uses the panelists’ details in the database, and the additional criteria, to assemble a group of panelists who are suitable for a particular survey. The required number of panelists are then selected randomly from that group.
Note: Forsta Plus does not support sampling from both Basic Panel and Professional Panel into the same survey.
It is not possible to sample to closed surveys from Standard or Professional Panels. If you attempt to do so, an error message will be displayed.
The panelists that are selected for a survey are “booked” in the system for a defined period from the moment that the job for which they have been selected is executed. The selected panelists are flagged in the database, and will be available to be included in jobs that are executed later according to the mailing dates and exclusion rules for those jobs.
This part of the documentation describes the functionality available through the Sample Management menu, and the procedures required to make use of that functionality.
Figure 1 - The Sample Management menu
Click on Sample Management to access the sub-menu commands. The Job List is automatically displayed below the menu. Click on a job in the list to select it and go to the Current Job window.
The menu commands are as follows:
- Current Job – opens the Current Job window. This window provides general information about the selected job. Use this window to define and edit the criteria for the job (go to Current Job Overview for more information).
- Current Matrix – this window shows the details of the matrix currently selected in the Matrix List (go to Current Matrix Overview for more information).
- Job List – lists all the sampling jobs that you currently have “in progress” (go to Job List Overview for more information).
- Active Job List – lists all the sampling jobs that are currently “in production” (go to Active Job List for more information).
- Matrix List – lists all the matrices currently available in your Forsta Plus database (go to Matrix List for more information).
- Scheduling – lists the jobs that are awaiting execution and those that have been run (go to Scheduling Overview for more information).
- Concurrent Sampling – enables you to run several sampling jobs simultaneously so scarce panelist resources can be allocated fairly across the jobs (go to Concurrent Sampling Overview for more information).
- Multiple Sample Upload – enables you to upload several jobs simultaneously (go to Multiple Sample Upload for more information).
- Tester Template List – templates that enable you to add rows to the respondent database that you can then populate with “dummy” respondent information such that you can test the survey and the system setup before you send it out to the actual respondents (go to Tester Template List Overview for more information).
- Sampling Settings – allows you to set default values and rules for the panel (go to Sampling Settings for more information).