CMNTY Platform is a diverse tool and can, therefore, be used in several ways to achieve different goals. Although you are free to choose and combine various functionalities to meet the purpose of your project, we would like to provide you with a couple of guidelines that will help you determine a combination of functionalities and tools that will allow for the most valid approach to data acquisition:
- We advise you to recruit participants for your project from a documented source, and provide sufficient information for initial confirmation of identity: your recruitment import should provide sufficient credentials to identify participants of the platform.
- We advise you to establish a system for monitoring and validating the frequency of participants’ participation and introduce such a system to the participants of your platform. In other words: make sure your participants know how often and how much they are expected, allowed or encouraged to participate in certain activities on your platform.
- We advise you to define the size of your project and be transparent about it to your (end) clients. Your platform should only be defined with participants who were sufficiently active throughout your research which you can achieve by checking the Participant Insights pages and using various functionalities in the Analyze section of your platform.
- It is crucial that you acquire explicit consent from your participants to use their personal data for your research. Therefore, it is important that you introduce it through your General Terms and Conditions or a Privacy Policy. We also advise you to have the personal data of the participants available to them upon request. The data must be corrected or deleted if a participant requests such action: you can achieve that by using User Deletion, Data Export and/or User Profile Edition.
- It is also advised to provide means (e.g. helpdesk contact details, a page of FAQ, etc.) by which your participants can obtain assistance or resolution of queries; It is crucial that you inform your participants when material changes are made to your privacy or incentive policies. Feel free to use the Newsletter functionality to ensure that your participants are duly informed.
- We advise you to make your participants aware if and when third parties (such as your end client) observe the activity on the platform by, e.g., using an Observer account.
- Importantly, you should inform new and forthcoming participants about the following when you invite them to participate in your platform:
- A general description of the project purpose.
- An estimated length of the project.
- A closing date for completed responses (if applicable).
- A list of types of data that will be collected in the project.
- A clear indication in case the data shall be collected for a period of time other than the length of the project.
- A statement of confidentiality and anonymity.
- An appropriate privacy statement.
- Provide them access to full disclosure of incentive terms and conditions applying to the project.
- An explanation in case the invitation is sent out on behalf of another research service provider.
- An explanation about the opportunity to unsubscribe (see below) or opt-out of future research
- An appropriate privacy policy or statement; You can choose from a variety of means in the platform to provide such information, e.g. Custom Pages, Homepage, General Terms and Conditions, etc.
- CMNTY Platform offers the option to activate a cookie message that needs to be accepted by the members. This message might be required by law in your country or the county in which the research primarily takes place. In that case, CMNTY advises activating this message.
- CMNTY Platform enables community managers to pre-test all research content and modules. We advise using the built-in draft functionality (modules) or the preview mode (Questionnaire / Stepboard) to achieve this, before publication of the content.
These guidelines are also compatible with the conditions set by ISO regarding market, opinion and social research (ISO 20252) and access panels in market, opinion and social research (ISO 26362).
Read more on the advised use of CMNTY Platform.