Data Collection

As a true full service research provider, we are well versed in online, traditional and mixed-mode data collection approaches as well as today’s leading qualitative approaches. Even given our advantages in the online data collection space, you can be confident that Harris Interactive will recommend online data collection only when it is deemed viable and appropriate.

Our clients appreciate the spectrum of data collection options we provide to them. In fact, we have and continue to conduct telephone research in over 90 countries worldwide. Although many clients are progressing to online and mixed modes, we continue to meet our clients’ telephone needs by contracting with select approved telephone centers as well as by using our own telephone centers.

While some online data collection providers tout a variety of seemingly impressive stats, our main priority is to ensure the highest level of data quality possible. Our strategy for ensuring the representativeness of your data collected online is to reduce total error. When it comes to online and mixed mode data collection, our research-on-(online) research findings influence all aspects of data collection where error can occur. The three main areas we systematically attend to in every project span from sampling and survey design through to weighting.

Harris Interactive leads the research community in thinking beyond the online survey to consider the abundant array of data collection options available, such as

• combining telephone interviews with online data entry (web-assisted personal interviewing [WAPI]),
• online recruitment to offline surveys (and vice-versa),
• online focus groups and in-depth interviews, and
• roving laptop-based interviews using computer-assisted personal interviews.

When commissioning mixed-mode, international and multinational work with Harris Interactive, our heritage in telephone and other traditional modalities coupled with our pioneering leadership in the online research space have enabled us to build a single research operations platform. This platform spans across all our owned and contracted telephone centers streamlining our online and telephone data collection into a robust global research platform we refer to as Integrated CATI WAPI (ICW).