With telephone response rates falling, and people who answer polls by phone becoming less and less representative, many pollsters have turned to online panel polling. As part of my interest in polling I have joined a number of online panels, to get some insight into the experience of respondents and ways in which their experience may shape how they respond. Being on polling panels is also helpful because I get to see some of the polls that are in the field and how they are designed (polling disclosure being as poor as it is, and many of these pollsters still not being Australian Polling Council members). By this method I also earn a very small amount of extra income by answering surveys on a range of topics. It's worth mentioning that despite some misconceptions to the contrary I am not a professional pollster or market researcher, so there's nothing stopping me taking most such surveys, though now and then my honest answers to a particular screening question will see me rightly screened out. There's also not a lot stopping the panels from kicking me off.
One of these panels is Ipsos MyView and I thought I should share a recent experience with them that I found especially absurd and that might provide some insight into the lives of online panel poll recipients. I may not have gone public had it been entirely a one-off, but my general experience is that this panel is very buggy compared to at least some others. Surveys sometimes crash or screen the respondent out without providing any points, or lurk in the respondent's dashboard as awaiting completion for weeks but if you click on them you are told the survey isn't available as you may have already taken it. There has been some improvement in this in recent months, with the panel more often referring the respondent to a different survey rather than screening them out immediately, but there are still far too many glitches.
