Advantages

Why Choose The 1KA Panel?

The 1KA Panel is based on probability sampling and has the following advantages compared to probability samples using traditional survey methods (postal, face-to-face and telephone surveys):

• Significantly lower costs.
• Faster data collection process, because recruitment (including respondent consent) has already been done.
• Faster data processing, because each completed survey is automatically entered into the database.
• Lower social desirability bias, leading to more honest answers on sensitive topics (e.g. drugs, health, sexual activity, finance, politics).

Compared to commercial or non-probability web panels, the main advantages of the 1KA Panel are:

• Significantly better representativeness of the sample, as the sample is (probabilistically) recruited from the entire adult population in Slovenia (1.7 million) and not just from the few percent of the Slovenian population willing to join commercial non-probability web panels.
• This is also associated with lower bias and higher accuracy of the estimates resulting from the probabilistic selection of units.
• In particular, probability samples - also called scientific samples (Kalton & Vehovar, 2001, p. 11) - provide a formal basis for statistical inference, so that the risks of sampling error can be calculated in the first place.
• The scientific nature of probability samples can, in the case of academic research, significantly increase the likelihood of results being published in the most reputable scientific journals.
• An important advantage is also the reduced burden on the respondent. This is because panellists receive an invitation to take part in a survey at most once a month, which is very different from commercial panels where invitations are much more frequent. This avoids the risk of panellists becoming so called 'professional respondents.'
• The topics covered by the surveys in the 1KA Panel are generally relevant social issues, thus avoiding the extremely broad spectrum of commercial sector content. This general relevance may discourage panellists from responding in a disengaged and routinised manner, and especially discourages the over-involvement of respondents interested in a particular topic.
• All questionnaires are systematically reviewed for compliance with the 1KA Panel's ethical and professional standards, ensuring a high level of quality.
• The participation rate of the panellists is very high (80 - 90 %) for all the reasons mentioned above, which contributes significantly to the quality of the results.

It is also worth highlighting the advantages of the 1KA platform, which the 1KA Panel uses for its surveys:

• Users can develop, create and test the questionnaire themselves in the 1KA tool, which is a very user-friendly, simple and intuitive online survey tool that has been used by more than 100.000 users in Slovenia. This way they save time and resources, while at the same time developing a hands-on relationship with their questionnaire. Of course, external methodologists or content experts can also be involved in the development of the questionnaire.
• Proper use of the 1KA tool eliminates the time-consuming pre-preparation of data, especially in terms of missing values and non-responses (e.g. Don't know, Prefer not to answer).
• Users can (if they wish) easily weight the data themselves and play with the different options, as a user-friendly 1KA weighting application has been developed for this purpose.
• Both the 1KA platform as well as the 1KA Panel are managed by the Centre for Social Informatics, so the integration of IT support for each step of the survey process is particularly efficient.