Question 1

What is a sample credit?

Accepted Answer

A sample credit purchases access to our proprietary respondent network and the recruitment and participation of qualified respondents for your study. Clients either purchase a monthly sample plan or buy sample credits as needed per project.

Question 2

What do sample credits apply to?

Accepted Answer

Sample credits cover access to and recruitment of respondents — whether that's through our proprietary panel, another panel network, or via your own email list. In all cases, the credit covers the fielding and participation of qualified respondents for your study. If your study uses your own email list, the sample credit still applies — we recruit participation from your provided audience, manage the fieldwork, and collect responses from qualified participants.

Question 3

How do you handle consent and data governance with different sample sources (e.g., panel vs email list)?

Accepted Answer

Regardless of recruitment source, all respondents participate through Inkblot's platform and under Inkblot's research terms and privacy policy. The same respondent protections and consent framework apply to every study, whether sample comes from our panel or your email list.

Question 4

How do we collect data?

Accepted Answer

Depending on your goal and your budget, there are two ways we collect data. Your Customer List: we can use email-based methods to contact your current customers and ask them to participate in a survey; customers can respond for free, or with incentives such as product discounts. Panels: we can use panel-based methods, which involve paying to recruit and incentivize the ideal respondent; these panelists allow for a broader range in characteristics than just your customer list.

Question 5

How do we collect data with panels?

Accepted Answer

To ensure we reach the right participants for your study, we partner with trusted panel providers. We have access to over 800 intercept suppliers and 4,500 panel databases, allowing us to access a wide range of qualified individuals. There are two types of panel providers: Panel Databases are companies that collect groups of people who sign up ahead of time to take surveys and usually receive some kind of reward for participating, such as points or money. Intercept Suppliers are companies that reach out to people to take surveys, which can happen in person (e.g., in a mall) or online via a social media post or ad.

Question 6

How do we know these are quality respondents?

Accepted Answer

We employ a number of respondent quality and data quality measures to ensure you're getting good quality data. We also partner with our panel providers to ensure they're following the latest and greatest techniques for recruiting and using quality respondents. Together, we and our partners employ methods to protect against: bots or AI survey-takers, speeders, "garbage" responses, non-responsive overuse, inconsistent or illogical responses, and inaccurate responses.

Question 7

How are panel respondents incentivized?

Accepted Answer

We customize every piece of research. This means sometimes your research audience might be very general (e.g., cereal consumers), and other times it might be very specific (e.g., neurosurgeons in Massachusetts). Depending on your audience, we work with different panels who we think can best deliver on your audience. Every panel incentivizes respondents differently. However, the primary methods of incentive include: cash, gift cards, points, loyalty rewards, or donations.

Question 8

What is CPI or CPC?

Accepted Answer

CPI stands for "Cost-Per-Interview." CPC stands for "Cost-Per-Complete." Both of these terms are interchangeable for the cost it takes one person to take a survey. Multiplying this cost by the number of people you want in your survey will give you the total estimated cost of the survey.

Question 9

What affects CPI / CPC?

Accepted Answer

There are three things that affect the cost per complete: how specific an audience you are targeting (the more specific the audience, the more expensive the CPC); how many screener questions you include (the more "screeners" you put in a survey, the more expensive the CPC); and the length of the survey (the longer the survey, the more expensive the CPC).

Question 10

Do you have CPI / CPC caps?

Accepted Answer

Yes and no. We provide an estimated CPI right before we launch the project to collect data. If your CPI increases by 10%, we automatically pause the project. We'll need formal approval before we can continue at the revised CPI. This policy exists because CPI is just an estimate — we can never truly know the price of respondents on the marketplace until your survey is live. Like any other market, price is set by a complicated exchange of supply and demand. Our "10% Pause Policy" is there to protect your budget and to allow us to optimize your project if we can.

Question 11

When will we know the real CPI / CPC?

Accepted Answer

Our data collection process has two steps. Soft Launch: we launch the survey and collect 10% of your overall sample — for example, if your survey is supposed to collect 1,000 people, we'll launch it to only 100 — to ensure survey programming is correct, data is being collected properly, respondent fatigue is acceptable, and other optimizations can be made. Full Launch: after testing and optimizing your survey, we launch to the remaining 90% of the sample. We'll have a clear idea of your CPI after the soft-launch step.

Question 12

What is sample targeting?

Accepted Answer

When determining the right sample for you, we first identify who you want to target. "Targeting criteria" are definable demographics, psychographics, technographics, and purchase behaviors we have in the database. For example, some characteristics we can target include: gender, age, income, ethnicity, race, marital status, recent purchases, and more.

Question 13

What is sample screening?

Accepted Answer

When we cannot target certain characteristics, we screen for them. To screen respondents, we insert questions into the survey that terminate respondents who do not meet the criteria. For example, if a survey requires the respondent to be aware of "Coca-Cola," there will be a question in the survey that asks this. If the respondent doesn't select "Coca-Cola," they'll be "terminated" — kicked out of the survey — and won't be incentivized for it.

Question 14

What is the difference between terms and completes?

Accepted Answer

There are three classifications of respondents: Terms — short for "terminated" — are respondents who screen out of the survey because they don't have the right characteristics. Completes are respondents who finish the entire survey. Partials are respondents who stop taking the survey partway through and never finish.

Question 15

Do I pay for terms and partials?

Accepted Answer

You only pay for respondents who complete the survey in full. You do not pay for terms or partials. However, terms and partials do affect your CPI because they affect the Incidence Rate (IR), which is calculated as Completes ÷ (Completes + Terms + Partials). The lower the IR, the higher the CPI.

Sample FAQs

Sample Credits

Data Collection

CPI / CPC

Additional FAQs