About our panels
A market research panel is made up of a group of people who have signed up to help businesses and other organisations who are invited to take part in surveys, and discussions and research.
Joining a panel is free and you only take part in the research or survey if you want to. You can also leave the panel at any time. rsch.me panels are special in that we only recruit panelists who are prepared to complete surveys while sharing a webcam feed, so we can see what you think.
Signing up
When you sign up you will be asked to complete a short questionnaire with information about yourself, so we can ensure that the invites we send out are more relevant to you. You will also be required to share your webcam, and may be asked to complete a video task.
We will contact you on the mobile phone number you provide with a text or automated message, as we want to ensure that all our participants are genuine and live in the country they claim to live in.
For expert advisory panels, we will speak to you in person and expect to validate your credentials and work history.
Getting invites
Once you have signed up, you will be sent invites to take part in projects as and when they arise. We will limit invites to one per week maximum - often less. You can also visit this website to see open projects.
We have four types of research projects
- Incentive-based where you get paid to take part. For online surveys this will normally be points that accumulate towards a cash payment, or for discussions, interviews or usability testing a direct payment made via Paypal
- charity-based, where every participant leads to a donation to charity, but no personal payment
- community surveys - which are open and can be set up by panel members themselves, but where no payment is due
- heartbeat survey - a 6 month survey that is issued automatically to confirm that you still want to be on the panel and that your details are up-to-date.
If you don't respond to the heartbeat survey we will assume that you no longer want to be part of the market research community and will remove your details - any unpaid points accumulated will be lost.
Protection of privacy
As a panelist, we will collect details about who you are, and may take steps to verify your identity. However, we will respect your anonymity and not share your personal details with clients who commission the research, though they may see extracts of the video of you completing the survey. If you prefer the video not to be shared, we will process it into a cartoon format before passing it on to the client so that it is not possible to identify you directly.
When taking part in any research, we request that you keep the details of the research private - businesses often have new ideas they want to try out without the rest of the world finding out.