I wonder how much the midset difference between online personalities impacts data quality. There is a distinct difference in the `online research participant` and the status quo, and it begs the question; do we ever really get a true read on effectiveness when only a portion of audiences ever respond to incentives to participate?

What is representative sample when everyone in the sample is a ’survey taker’? It’s true that online ‘text based’ surveys are often dry, scientific and boring – visually engaging surveys that add an interactive element to the participant experience might increase the potential of adding new blood to the respondent base, but ultimately aren’t we really still pulling the same ‘type’ of audience through the gate?

In mobile I can see the visual aspect of the survey interface being not only an aspect of a successful buyer/seller conversation, but a crucial one.

On the web, consumers are well attuned to the multithreaded nature of ‘pages’, being led here and there by navigation and clicks, but on mobile the experience is significantly different; users tend to be more single task focused and dislike being yanked from one action to another – especially when the move is from ‘app to browser’.

Moreover, the browser ‘form’ experience in mobile is far from pleasant for consumers to navigate through, compounding the negative effect.

By integrating ’same context’ immersion and visually engaging mechanics into the survey process within mobile apps, mobile users can be incented and surveyed without interruption of the activity they are engaged in. They can, in the context of an app, also be provided with incentives to respond that correlate directly to the activity they are engaged with – an example being using incentives of microcurrency within a mobile social game or app.

In addition, the novelty of the mobile app experience and a well integrated interactive survey has a decent shot at pulling in respondents from outside the normal ’survey taker’ mentality, increasing overall response and improving overall representativity. With the use of mobile interface elements that make responding to questions easier and more ‘interesting’, this effect is further improved.

Loop Analytics is piloting a new ability to intercept and incent mobile users to engage in brand lift studies within the mobile app context with promising initial response, but it remains to be seen how this will play into the overall landscape of sample sizes, response rates and data quality/consistency.