Acceso usuarios
Survey research depends crucially on its ability to collect data from a targeted sample and for that sample to mirror the population of interest. Increasingly, survey firms are using data purchased from marketing firms such as Experian and Acxiom (consumer-file marketing data) as a means to improve correspondence between survey respondents and the general public. These data hold tremendous promise, not only for sampling at a reduced cost, but also for allowing researchers to adjust biases that often occur across groups in traditional survey research. Though these new techniques are gaining momentum and currency, there is to date no published research comparing marketing data to more traditionally sampled data. The benefits from using marketing data depend in part on whether the data are both accurate and complete. This paper is the first to systematically assess the quality of one source of consumer-file marketing data. Using a unique data set compiled by GfK KnowledgePanel®, we compare this source of ancillary marketing data with self-report data on the same respondents to determine the correspondence between the two. We also evaluate conditions under which consumer-file data are missing to determine whether patterns in missing data might introduce systematic biases when data are analyzed. Results indicate that the ancillary data differ from self-reported data on a variety of demographic factors. Further, data were missing in patterns that could not be easily addressed. The findings urge caution for those who hope to improve survey administration and design using currently available consumer-file data.
