The State of Data Quality in Research: A Podcast Interview with Cheskie Rosenzweig
At CloudResearch, we live and breathe data quality. Our main principle is to implement a higher standard for data quality across the market research industry. We are committed to making online survey fraud a thing of the past.
Cheskie Rosenzweig, our Senior Research and Product Scientist, joined Priscilla McKinney on Ponderings from the Perch podcast to continue the never ending discussion in market research about data quality.
For nearly a decade, Cheskie’s work has been centered around improving data quality in online research. He has numerous publications and patents in this area, and his expertise is in designing and testing systems that remove low-quality respondents while maintaining representativeness across participant platforms.
In this podcast, Cheskie discusses Sentry®, our proprietary system that utilizes both technical and behavioral checkpoints to ensure all participants are high-quality participants.
Sample Some of This Expert Q&A About Data Quality:
- I already have my own data checks. Why would I need to include Sentry on my project?
Internal data checks are a great thing, and should not be discontinued. Sentry is something that researchers should be adding to projects to allow the research industry to have a consistent method of data quality with a high level of stringency. There are standards across all other facets of research, but no rigorous ones for data quality, which is so critical for the validity of research. - Why is setting higher data quality standards important?
The CDC ran a study in 2021 about various methods people were using to try to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Their results showed that 30% of people were using bleach in an unsafe way, including doing things like bleaching food and even ingesting cleaners or disinfectants. CloudResearch reran the study with the same questions and methodology, but included the Sentry system to vet out low-quality participants who were inattentive, bots, or otherwise fraudulent. When the results came back, there were way less of all of these dangerous behaviors than the CDC report greatly inflated. Without high data quality standards, there could be all kinds of inaccurate conclusions being made, poor decisions reached, and resources incorrectly allocated. - Doesn’t my panel provider have enough security systems in place?
Many panel providers are actually aggregators that pull data from a variety of sources. While this is great for the industry in that it allows researchers to reach a wider audience, it can also mean that there are inconsistencies in the security and quality of data. Additionally, most panel providers only provide the most basic technical checkpoints – things like IP tracking or digital fingerprinting. Sentry takes the protection to another level by including geolocation tracking and event streaming which checks for things like language translations. Sentry® also includes unique behavioral checks to stop inattention and yea-saying, which standard solutions do not provide.
