Maximize Power: Online Survey Panels and the Price-Quality Trade-Off

The use of survey-experimental research with online access panels provided by marketing research companies has grown significantly in the social sciences. These panels offer rapid access to quota-representative samples, enabling generalizable findings alongside causal inferences. However, researchers face a wide range of pricing options, with higher-priced companies often claiming superior quality in terms of respondent attentiveness, honesty, and representativity beyond quota characteristics. This creates a potential trade-off between sample quality and the statistical power achievable within a given research budget. Our study examines this trade-off within the context of Germany, the largest economy in Europe. We solicited bids from all marketing research companies operating in the German market to conduct survey-experimental research. From these, we selected three companies representing low, medium, and high price points, each corresponding to self-reported panel quality. Using identical vignette, priming, and conjoint experiments, along with standard socio-demographic and attitudinal measures relevant to political behavior research, we compared the outcomes across these quota-representative samples. Our findings suggest that for experimental designs, the trade-off between price and quality is less pronounced than commonly assumed. Based on this evidence, we recommend prioritizing statistical power by minimizing costs per respondent.