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    Panel Survey

    A panel survey repeatedly surveys the same pre-recruited group of respondents over time, enabling within-person change analysis.

    Panels are pre-recruited, profiled respondents who agree to receive surveys on an ongoing basis. Two flavors dominate: (1) proprietary panels owned by a brand (e.g., a customer advisory board of 500 enterprise admins); (2) commercial panels run by providers like Dynata, Cint, and Prolific, which sell access to millions of profiled consumers. Panel surveys reduce recruitment cost and enable longitudinal analysis, but suffer from panel conditioning (respondents become 'professional' answerers) and attrition. Panel attrition of 15-25% per wave is normal in monthly tracking.

    Example

    A CX team maintains a 1,200-person customer panel. Each month they field a 5-minute pulse to a random 300-person subset, ensuring no respondent gets surveyed more than once per quarter. Wave 12 retention: 78% of original panel still active.

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    Related terms

    Longitudinal Survey

    A longitudinal survey collects data from the same respondents (or population) at multiple points in time to measure change.

    Cross-Sectional Survey

    A cross-sectional survey collects data from a population at a single point in time, providing a snapshot of attitudes, behaviors, or outcomes.

    Pulse Survey

    A pulse survey is a short, frequent survey (3-5 questions) used to track sentiment over time.

    Survey Response Rate

    Response rate is the percentage of invited respondents who completed (or at least started) a survey.

    Sample Size

    Sample size is the number of respondents needed for survey results to be statistically meaningful at a given confidence level and margin of error.

    Margin of Error

    Margin of error is the range within which the true population value likely falls, given the sample size and confidence level.