Selecting the appropriate audience is a crucial part of the process of building any survey in Attest, as it'll determine:
How long it takes for your survey to complete
What your data output looks like
What demographics you can use in the analysis of your data
How insightful your survey can be and how much it represents your market and/or audience
There are a list of in-built demographics which vary slightly from country to country and you can find them in the Audience page or here. When you select a demographic filter (eg. Males), the Attest system will only open your survey to respondents matching that criteria.
If you did not choose to customise your audience, your survey will be filled on a first-come-first-served basis. The additional demographic details you see on your results dashboard are given as added value, when they're available. If you need demographic details, ensure you select them when drafting your survey; don't rely on them being available in the results view if you haven't selected them. For example, if you're running a survey targeted at retirees, you'll want to select that filter in the Audience page, so only retirees can complete the survey. If your target respondent can have any employment status, but you want be sure to see that information in results, you'll need to use the Select all button in the Audience page to make sure these details are populated in the results view.
The impact of quotas
Quotas are a great way to ensure you have an even (or chosen) distribution within a demographic. For example, if you want to make sure your survey is filled by an equal number of men and women, you might want to select 50% for each gender. However, this is a firm quota that the Attest system will need to adhere to, and that means it will start excluding people who cannot fill that quota. While our reach means it's often easy to find those respondents, the more quotas you add the longer it will take to find the people who can fill all those different demographic quotas at the same time. Sometimes, adding too many quotas will render the reachable audience impossible, as the requirements can either be conflicting (25 year old retirees) or too niche because there are too few of those individuals in the general population to have a presence in online surveys.
Example:
Women: 500,000
Women, aged 20-30: 20,000
Women, aged 20-30, who are students or part-time workers: 8,000
Women, aged 20-30, who are students or part-time workers and live in London: 2,500
Women, aged 20-30, who are students or part-time workers, live in London and have children: 1000
Women, aged 20-30, who are students or part-time workers, live in London, have children and an income of 20K or above: 400
The number of people available to take surveys who can match your desired criteria can be found on the Audience page as well.
The available sample will reduce every time you add a demographic filter, for the reason outlined above. The total available audience is a dynamic figure: it is based on the active number of users taking part in online surveys in the past few days, who match the requirements you've set.
What audience requirements do you actually need?
This depends on
What you are trying to learn with your data
How you will use it, and
Who your target consumer is
For some projects it will be quite obvious. For example, if you have a feminine hygiene product and you want to test a campaign for it, you are very likely to select just women, or if you are launching a baby product you'll want to use the Parental Status demographic, and so on.
However, in many other cases, you do not need to unnecessarily restrict your audience by using quotas or target audiences, especially when your product or campaign has a wide reach. Some exceptions include:
Brand Trackers - ideally, Nat Rep quotas should be added, as you are likely to compare the evolution of the data over time and not having the same type of audience profile may actually give you a wrong reading of your metrics (because the audience has changed, not the sentiment/behaviour).
PR surveys or market landscape - because they usually cover the entirety of the population, you also want to use a Nat Rep sample to make sure your audience is representative of the population of that country. Most countries have NatRep audiences built-in to the Attest platform already, otherwise you can use internet stats to estimate the Nat Rep and add them into the system (some clients use this one).
Any type of research project which will be monitored over time and needs audience consistency - in that case you might want to find out who your audience is first, and then apply that split over the course of the project. For example, if I want to target money-senders, I can run a survey to better understand their demographic profile, and reapply that profile to all surveys.
When you have a set audience based on your target consumer group (e.g. parents, students, home owners etc).
Feasibility
Feasibility is the number of respondents you will be able to access through Attest, and the time in which you can expect your survey to complete.
The first thing you can do is check the Audience page for the available sample (as shown above). This number takes into account the demographic filters you have applied and whether you have asked any qualifying questions (although the nature of the questions cannot be read by the system, so please do contact our team using the in-platform live chat if you'd like to discuss the precise feasibility of your survey).
Don't hesitate to get in contact using the live chat if you have any more questions.