Frequently Asked Questions

There are 2 main reasons that people want to do market research surveys: Firstly, it is nice to know that people - our clients - genuinely want to know what you think. Walk down any street and you are bound to hear someone giving their opinion on something, even if you don't want to hear it. Talkinsights offers you the opportunity to get your opinions heard by people who actually influence the products and services you pay for.

The other main reason people do surveys is for financial reward, and there is nothing wrong with that. If you are going to give up 10 minutes of your valuable time to tell us what you think, it is only right and proper that you are offered something in recompense. We reward people by awarding points for every survey you do. When you have accumulated sufficient points, you can convert them into a high street shopping voucher.

Our clients pay us to carry out market research for them. If we use an example of say, a business who is thinking of spending £5 million on designing, manufacturing, advertising and distributing a new product, they'd be a bit remiss if they didn't actually bother to find out if people are likely to buy the thing! We design and program questionnaires, send them to our panel, and then provide the client with the results when we have collected all the data. We charge depending upon how many people we interview, how difficult those people are to find, and how long a survey is. We reward our members for doing the surveys, then we have things like rent, salaries, software, hardware, telephones etc to pay for. Anything left over is profit, most of which we re-invest in the business.

Once you have completed the initial registration we will send you and email to validate your email address. And once you have done that we will send you a more detailed registration survey (with additional questions about you, so we can ensure we have all the details before we send you more surveys) along with 5 short surveys, and once you have completed the this second registration survey and at least 3 of the short surveys, and we have validated your responses, you are all set to become a fully fledged panel member. The reason we check your responses is to ensure that you are paying attention, as we are committed to our clients to provide quality data. If fewer than 3 of those quick surveys are completed correctly, unfortunately you will not be able to join the panel.

You can contact us if you have any questions about the process.

To be honest, all we really care about is that if you do decide to respond to a survey, you are honest, and take your time. We really want to know what you think. If people regularly go too fast, or give inconsistent answers, then we figure they are not serious about the work we do, and we will stop asking their opinion. Although we try to make our surveys easy to complete, and lighthearted when we can, they are meant to get at the truth.

You don't have to give us much at all. A name, address and date of birth are pretty essential, as is knowing your gender. However, the more we know about you, the more chance we have of sending you suitable surveys. Knowing you are a mum, or a car owner, or self-employed (or all 3!) might help us fit your profile to that sought by a client for a particular question they want to ask. The more you tell us, the more points we give you, too. You do this by filling in the personal profiles when you join (or at any time). We do not store highly sensitive information like credit card details - there's just no need - or very personal information like sexuality. Also it really is your choice whether or not you answer questions like this. We are a Company Partner of the Market Research Society and strongly support their Code of Conduct. You can read more about that here (https://www.mrs.org.uk/standards/code_of_conduct/) if you are interested.

We need contact details (such as your email address) so we can contact you about survey opportunities. We collect postcode data and other info so we can select relevant surveys. Only someone with very young children would be suitable for a nappy survey. And an opinion poll about hospitals in Bristol would be less relevant if answered by people living in Scotland.

Not at all. Obviously, if you never do any, we'd assume you weren't interested, and stop sending them to you. But you are under no obligation to take part. The more questionnaires you complete, the quicker you will accumulate points, of course, but we would rather you enjoyed the experience. And you wouldn't enjoy it if you felt unreasonable pressure to participate.

Every sort of person is in our panel. We don't have anyone under 18, but there is no upper age limit. One restriction we do enforce is that you are only allowed to join the panel once. If you had 2 IDs in our community, then the risk is that you take the same survey twice. If you answered both the same way, then the data would be skewed. If you answered differently, it means you weren't telling the truth on at least one occasion, and there'd be no point to counting your data.

The only other thing that we need to say is that the Talkinsights panel is a UK-only community. There is nothing to stop you joining if you live elsewhere, but for now at least, you would not receive any survey invitations. You could still visit the site, and do any instant polls or profiling surveys there, but you could not claim a voucher. If you did somehow accumulate the points and receive a voucher, you'd have to come to the UK to spend it!

Essentially, we are all quite similar, in that we want our panel to tell us what they think. Some businesses don't give rewards to their members, but we think it's right that we do. We think we offer rewards that are quite a lot higher than most panels and we try to avoid asking you the same old questions time and again. Most panels seem even to forget whether you are male or female and keep asking again. We try to treat you with respect and hope you will do the same to us. Another thing that does set us apart is that we try to make our surveys interesting and fun. We never accept extra long surveys from clients, because we think that would bore people rigid, and they may never want to do another! Many of our surveys are 2 or 3 minutes long, with 85% taking less than 10 minutes, and we try to never go over 20 minutes.

This depends upon how much work you have to do. If you only have one question to answer, you would only get 10 points or so. If you stuck with a very long survey, you could get 250 points or more. But most carry between 50 and 100 points. And if you get screened out (let's say we only wanted to talk to smokers and you aren't one, we'd filter you out) you still get some points - usually 5.

Easy peasy. When you reach 2,000 points, log on to your account, follow the link, and choose your voucher from the list: Amazon, Arcadia, Argos, Asda, BHS, Boots, B&Q, Debenhams, PC World, Currys, Gap, Halfords, Harrods, Homebase, House of Fraser, IKEA, John Lewis, Kadeos European Voucher, Laithwaites Wine, Love To Shop High Street, M & S, Morrisons, Marriott Dinner for two Worldwide Voucher, Marriott US Premier Platinum Voucher, Marriott Vouchers, Marriott Worldwide Voucher, New Look, Next, River Island Voucher, Sainsbury, See Tickets, Selfridges, Signet, Thomas Cook, Thresher Voucher, Tony & Guy, Virgin, Waitrose, Waterstones, WH Smith.

We have a great selection of paper vouchers and some people just prefer them. We gather your requests in the course of the week and send them in one batch to a voucher provider on Wednesday. The voucher provider then directly mails you your voucher so we don't really see when the individual vouchers go out but they should pop through the door a week or two later. Please accept our apologies if you are experiencing delays in receiving your vouchers. You WILL receive your vouchers, but they may be a little delayed. However, if you don't receive your voucher in three working weeks, please contact our Support Team.

Of course. In fact we hope you do. Some of our members have written to complain that they did not receive a voucher. Then we discover that they moved house without telling us. This means their voucher is probably being spent by someone who thinks we send them out for fun, so it can be an expensive mistake if you do not keep details up to date!

It couldn't be easier to take one of our surveys. You will receive an email invitation from us, in which there will be a link that you click on. This will take you straight to the questionnaire, and it is a piece of cake after that. When you have reached the end of the survey your points automatically get updated. That's it!

The more you tell us about yourself, the more chance you have of receiving invitations. Should we be looking for, say, parents of teenagers, and we don't know you have a couple of the little blighters spending your money and filling your house with their odd-looking chums, then you might not get the invitation that could change your life. OK, we won't change your life, but you could one day trade in a Boots voucher for a pair of industrial strength earplugs. And if you have teenagers, you know you need them...

We are committed to providing high quality data to our clients, that is why occasionally we need to remove people from our panel when they have given us poor quality responses on more than one occasion, and deduct the credit received for the particular survey. Thankfully this a rare event, but if we do need to close a member's account, then he or she cannot collect points any further points.

You can still redeem your points in 2000 point increments (value of £20 voucher). You have 6 months to do and after that the points will be wiped out. If you have less than 2000 points remaining after you redeem, you will unfortunately lose those.

We would send you an email if any of this happened. You can contact us if you feel that the mark was given by mistake or is not fair.

There are 2 types of data you give us. One is your personal stuff such as address and email. We NEVER share that with anyone without your express permission, and we hardly ever need it. The people that send your vouchers will know your home address (but nothing else about you). The only other example of sharing your info I can think of is when we are asked to provide people for focus groups. A focus group is where a few people (usually 6 to 8) sit round a table, or link up via a chat room to discuss something in depth. We are sometimes asked if we can supply members of our panel who would be interested in participating. Obviously, if a third party is going to conduct a focus group (we tend not to do them ourselves), they will need to know how to get hold of you. But don't worry, we ask your permission if we ever need you to do one of these.

The other type of data you give us is your answers to our questions. We always use this information in an accumulated way. In other words, if you are a male aged 51 and living in the North West, what you have told us will be aggregated with other people with a similar profile. We’ll never provide this kind of data in a way that you, as an individual, can be identified.

Yes. We'd hate to lose you, but we always understand if anyone wishes to leave. There is any easy-to-follow link on the site. Once you have clicked to unsubscribe from our panel, you should receive no further communications from us.

You can redeem your points in 2000 point increments (value of £20 voucher). Please ensure you do so before you unsubscribe, as you will lose access to your account and your points will be lost. If you have less than 2000 points remaining after you redeem, you will unfortunately lose those unless you remain on the panel to complete more surveys.

Talkinsights management has the discretion to decide if a panellist can remain a member after receiving 3 poor quality marks. Normally the decision is taken not to allow membership, so there would not be a way to earn more points to get to the redeemable voucher value.

Unfortunately, we have had cases where people set up multiple accounts under different names, or intentionally provided incorrect or conflicting information in order to gain a financial advantage. In those cases (and these are very rare), we reserve the right to remove all the accumulated points immediately and shut down the account or accounts in question.

Well you can if you insist but we’re not really active anywhere but the UK at the moment – so it isn’t really worth your while. It’s quite a big step to run surveys frequently enough in other Countries that it’s worth having a panel and worth you joining it. We do lots of International research but it’s only in the UK that we do enough to keep our community members happy with enough surveys.

Yes - very. Talkinsights will not share your personal details with anyone. Talkinsights will not sell your personal details to anyone. All data is securely stored and protected behind a "firewall". We are a Company Partner of the Market Research Society, strongly support their Code of Conduct and take protecting your data very seriously. You can read more about that here (https://www.mrs.org.uk/standards/code_of_conduct/) if you are interested. Of course we are also registered under the Data Protection Act – registration number ZA173971.

There are several types of polls and thus ways in which you can earn points on the Talkinsights site: Express surveys - These tend to contain a variety of simple, often unrelated questions. They should only take a few minutes to complete. Typically, you will tend to receive between 20 and 50 points for these. Research questionnaire - These tend to be more focused on one issue, and might be comparatively lengthy (say 5 - 20 minutes to complete). Rewards for these will therefore tend to be higher (50 - 150 points typically. More for very long ones). Refer a Friend - Do you enjoy doing our surveys? Do you know anyone who might like to do the same? We are always looking to recruit new members, as we are getting more and more work to do all the time so if you recommend a friend to join Talkinsights then we'll pop 25 points into your account when they register. To refer a friend, first you need to be logged in and then you just need to enter their email address, name and a short message and 25 points will be added to your account when they join. We are always looking for fresh ways of rewarding our community. Look out for news of this on our website.

Talkinsights have kept it simple. Once you have gained 2000 points you can convert your points into £20 vouchers from leading high street retailers:

Amazon, Arcadia, Argos, , Bhs, Boots, B&Q, Debenhams, PC World, Currys, Gap, Halfords, Harrods, Homebase, House of Fraser, IKEA, John Lewis, Kadeos European Voucher, Laithwaites Wine, Love To Shop High Street, M & S, Morrisons, Marriott Dinner for two Worldwide Voucher, Marriott US Premier Platinum Voucher, Marriott Vouchers, Marriott Worldwide Voucher, New Look, Next, Ocado, River Island Voucher, Sainsbury, See Tickets, Selfridges, Signet, Thomas Cook, Thresher Voucher, Tony & Guy, Virgin, Waitrose, Waterstones, WH Smith.

These will normally be dispatched within a week of redemption.

No. Once you register you will be issued with a confidential password. Only you can enter your page or take part in a survey.

We have a great selection of paper vouchers and some people just prefer them. We gather your requests in the course of the week and send them in one batch to a voucher provider on Wednesday. The voucher provider then directly mails you your voucher so we don't really see when the individual vouchers go out but they should pop through the door a week or two later. Please accept our apologies if you are experiencing delays in receiving your vouchers. You WILL receive your vouchers, but they may be a little delayed. However, if you don't receive your voucher in three working weeks, please contact our Support Team.

We gather your Amazon voucher requests and send them to Amazon once a week. We send the Amazon codes every Thursday/Friday. If you requested your voucher on a Thursday therefore it can take up to 7 days to get it. If you requested your voucher on a Wednesday it will be up to 2 days.