A big success and a big loss
In 1985 we had to perform the test of the tele-interview procedure for the large panel study that the SWOKA liked to do. The SWOKA provided a budget that made it possible to build a panel with 100 households. This meant that we had to buy 100 Atari home computers, 100 modems and sufficient cables to connect these tools to the television and the telephone. Further more these computers had to be installed in 100 households which required extra employees for the SRF.
New employees for the SRF
Irmtraud had the financial responsibility on behalf of the SRF for this project. The management of this study was in the hands of Leo Van Doorn who had already experience with the technical issues of this approach. He was assisted by Emiel Bon with whom he had worked for several years in his research on computer assisted data collection using psychophysical scales.
Building up a computer panel of 100 households required also people with different skills than social science researchers have. The SRF needed a person who was socially very effective in convincing people to participate in research. Simon Polls was such a person as he had shown in several studies. Moreover an expert was needed who could install the hardware in the households and test the proper functioning. For this task we found a young guy who did not do anything else but playing with these computer tools except for taking care of his owls. His name was Arthur Mol (his photo is missing).
New employees for the SRF
Irmtraud had the financial responsibility on behalf of the SRF for this project. The management of this study was in the hands of Leo Van Doorn who had already experience with the technical issues of this approach. He was assisted by Emiel Bon with whom he had worked for several years in his research on computer assisted data collection using psychophysical scales.
Building up a computer panel of 100 households required also people with different skills than social science researchers have. The SRF needed a person who was socially very effective in convincing people to participate in research. Simon Polls was such a person as he had shown in several studies. Moreover an expert was needed who could install the hardware in the households and test the proper functioning. For this task we found a young guy who did not do anything else but playing with these computer tools except for taking care of his owls. His name was Arthur Mol (his photo is missing).
The results of the test
In order to test the cooperation of the people the following procedure was used: A random sample was drawn of 156 households. Simon Pols asked the people at the door to cooperate in a normal face to face interview. At that moment 44 people refused to cooperate (21 had no time and 23 no interest). The computers were installed by Arthur Mol. In 8 cases this gave technical problem so that the interview was not possible. After the face to face interview was done Simon Pols asked the respondent to fill in some questions on the computer (with his help). After these questions were done the respondents were asked if they were willing to participate in the panel whereby the computer would remain in the household as already installed. Only 14 persons refused to cooperate. Most people liked it that they could work on a computer. Only a few elderly persons did not want to participate in the panel.
In total the cooperation was around 60% what was not very different from the cooperation in face to face research. The distribution with respect to income was not different from a face to face interview. Also with respect to age there was only a slight difference in the oldest group which easily could be compensated.
The respondents were asked each weekend to fill in a questionnaire. On Monday one could check who had not answered. They received a reminder. On Wednesday the total response was known which was each week above 90%. Only two households answered so irregularly that the computer was removed. One reason for the high response was that there were a lot of games on the home computers and we provided them also with such games as a reward for their time. Probably the children were also playing an important role in the high cooperation of the parents. It also was remarkable that after these 6 months nearly all were willing to continue with another computer. Only 4 households reacted negatively on this request of which two said that they had already bought too many games for this computer. All these results were convincing enough for the SWOKA to decide that they were willing to use this new approach for their income and expenditures research.
In order to test the cooperation of the people the following procedure was used: A random sample was drawn of 156 households. Simon Pols asked the people at the door to cooperate in a normal face to face interview. At that moment 44 people refused to cooperate (21 had no time and 23 no interest). The computers were installed by Arthur Mol. In 8 cases this gave technical problem so that the interview was not possible. After the face to face interview was done Simon Pols asked the respondent to fill in some questions on the computer (with his help). After these questions were done the respondents were asked if they were willing to participate in the panel whereby the computer would remain in the household as already installed. Only 14 persons refused to cooperate. Most people liked it that they could work on a computer. Only a few elderly persons did not want to participate in the panel.
In total the cooperation was around 60% what was not very different from the cooperation in face to face research. The distribution with respect to income was not different from a face to face interview. Also with respect to age there was only a slight difference in the oldest group which easily could be compensated.
The respondents were asked each weekend to fill in a questionnaire. On Monday one could check who had not answered. They received a reminder. On Wednesday the total response was known which was each week above 90%. Only two households answered so irregularly that the computer was removed. One reason for the high response was that there were a lot of games on the home computers and we provided them also with such games as a reward for their time. Probably the children were also playing an important role in the high cooperation of the parents. It also was remarkable that after these 6 months nearly all were willing to continue with another computer. Only 4 households reacted negatively on this request of which two said that they had already bought too many games for this computer. All these results were convincing enough for the SWOKA to decide that they were willing to use this new approach for their income and expenditures research.
Can we take this risk?
Given these results and the offer of SWOKA to use this panel approach for their large scale panel study, the SRF had to decide whether this was a project it could do by its own or that it should be done by a regular market research organization. The SWOKA wanted a panel of minimal 1000 households. That would require quite a large investment in equipment but also in extra employees. On the one hand it was an advantage that a lot of these costs were already covered by the contract with the SWOKA. However the SWOKA contract could not cover all the costs, other research should be obtained as well to compensate for the investment. That would mean that the SRF would become a commercial market research company and would not be a research foundation any more.
Leo van Doorn´s team liked very much to continue with this research but Irmtraud and I were more hesitant to ask for huge loans with the risk that we would not get enough research to pay the expenses.
Contact with NIPO
Before this development I had already contacts with the director of NIPO, the Gallup organization in the Netherlands. Given the new situation I once spoke with him about the possibility to cooperate in this activity where they would do the management of the panel and the SRF would do the scientific analyses. In August of the same year, after the pilot study, the director of NIPO made the proposal that they would take over from the SRF all the know-how about the panel approach, the software, the people and the contract of the SWOKA and in return NIPO would pay the SRF a considerable amount of money. This created for the SRF a serious dilemma: Life would become much more relaxed, we would have money for the sociometric research that we would like to do, but on the other hand, we would lose the best researchers I was working with at that moment. Leo van Doorn and Emiel Bon were very much against this idea.
Given these results and the offer of SWOKA to use this panel approach for their large scale panel study, the SRF had to decide whether this was a project it could do by its own or that it should be done by a regular market research organization. The SWOKA wanted a panel of minimal 1000 households. That would require quite a large investment in equipment but also in extra employees. On the one hand it was an advantage that a lot of these costs were already covered by the contract with the SWOKA. However the SWOKA contract could not cover all the costs, other research should be obtained as well to compensate for the investment. That would mean that the SRF would become a commercial market research company and would not be a research foundation any more.
Leo van Doorn´s team liked very much to continue with this research but Irmtraud and I were more hesitant to ask for huge loans with the risk that we would not get enough research to pay the expenses.
Contact with NIPO
Before this development I had already contacts with the director of NIPO, the Gallup organization in the Netherlands. Given the new situation I once spoke with him about the possibility to cooperate in this activity where they would do the management of the panel and the SRF would do the scientific analyses. In August of the same year, after the pilot study, the director of NIPO made the proposal that they would take over from the SRF all the know-how about the panel approach, the software, the people and the contract of the SWOKA and in return NIPO would pay the SRF a considerable amount of money. This created for the SRF a serious dilemma: Life would become much more relaxed, we would have money for the sociometric research that we would like to do, but on the other hand, we would lose the best researchers I was working with at that moment. Leo van Doorn and Emiel Bon were very much against this idea.
The final decision
In October there was still no decision made about the offer of NIPO when a meeting of the Dutch Association of Marketing researchers took place where I was invited to speak about the use of better measurement procedures. However I had decided to talk about our pilot study with the tele- interviewing and to demonstrate it there as well. This presentation was well prepared and by coincidence an English market researcher was invited to present his idea about the possibilities of on line research under special groups such as doctors. He first presented his vague ideas and then I demonstrated our tele-interview and showed the results for a random sample of the population.
At the meeting a discussion started about unfair competition by research supported by universities. It seemed that our work had impressed the audience and they seemed to be afraid for the new development. A former director of NIPO defended our work, having in the back of his mind the talks about cooperation in some way or another.
After this meeting the offer of NIPO was a bit adapted by adding some financial revenues on a yearly basis for maintenance and improvement of the program, but also the claim of exclusive rights of the program for 5 years in the Netherlands, allowing the SRF to use the panel for some scientific experiments.
In October there was still no decision made about the offer of NIPO when a meeting of the Dutch Association of Marketing researchers took place where I was invited to speak about the use of better measurement procedures. However I had decided to talk about our pilot study with the tele- interviewing and to demonstrate it there as well. This presentation was well prepared and by coincidence an English market researcher was invited to present his idea about the possibilities of on line research under special groups such as doctors. He first presented his vague ideas and then I demonstrated our tele-interview and showed the results for a random sample of the population.
At the meeting a discussion started about unfair competition by research supported by universities. It seemed that our work had impressed the audience and they seemed to be afraid for the new development. A former director of NIPO defended our work, having in the back of his mind the talks about cooperation in some way or another.
After this meeting the offer of NIPO was a bit adapted by adding some financial revenues on a yearly basis for maintenance and improvement of the program, but also the claim of exclusive rights of the program for 5 years in the Netherlands, allowing the SRF to use the panel for some scientific experiments.
The decision
We had to make our decision. On the basis of the knowledge we had developed in the field of decision making, we elaborated the decision problems, specifying the possible actions, the possible outcomes, their probabilities and evaluations. The result is presented below.
We had to make our decision. On the basis of the knowledge we had developed in the field of decision making, we elaborated the decision problems, specifying the possible actions, the possible outcomes, their probabilities and evaluations. The result is presented below.
Given the specification of this decision problem in the choice questionnaire structure, it was clear to us, even without quantifying values of the outcomes, that we should not refuse this offer and so the contract was made. NIPO started in January 1986 with building up its computer panel with the personal that came from the SRF. The SRF continued to use a panel of 50 households for its own experiments and control and the improvement of the procedures.
A very event-full year
After our detection of the modem and its possible application, the SRF went through a very eventfull year where firstly our own panel was built up and tested with our research team. Then within a year all new knowledge was sold and the personal moved with the software to a commercial organization. The SRF had obtained a considerable amount of money for further research, but we had to start from scratch again. Fortunately it was of course also a bit less crowded in our house and we could again continue with our previous projects.