International Projects

At OnePoll we have our own panel in the UK, however we are also able to deliver international research projects by working with trusted panel partners across the globe. We’ve worked on projects in over 70 countries so far, and can poll respondents virtually anywhere.

When undertaking international research projects, there are some extra considerations:

• Cultural differences – It’s important to ask yourself if the questions you want to ask make sense everywhere? A simple example would be as a British person, it’s pretty much guaranteed to have a kettle due to drinking copious amounts of tea. However for our cousins across the pond, due to differences in voltage making electric kettles less effective and more of a passion for coffee over tea, kettles are just not as popular. This would impact how you ask each audience if you wanted to survey people about their energy use at home, habits with hot drinks, or even advertising awareness; something which seems superficially simple actually needs careful consideration.
  • This also relates to making sure that you are allowed to ask the questions you want to in all the markets, for example in France, it’s actually illegal to ask people for their ethnicity. Or say you wanted to ask people questions about their sexuality or experiences with abortion – laws vary by country and you want to make sure that appropriate protections are in place for respondents, and that they will be comfortable answering.
• Grammar – Terms which mean the same thing can differ across markets which might not be considered as that different otherwise, a classic example would be holiday in the UK vs. vacation in the US. If you start asking American respondents what their holiday plans are, then they might think you are talking about Christmas! It’s really important to make sure that what you are asking makes sense for the markets which you are asking in.
• Spelling: Colour vs. color, jewellery vs. jewelery, whisky vs. whiskey, etc.
• Scales – If you are asking questions with scales based on measurements then these need to be tailored to each market. It’s important that the respondent understands what you are trying to ask, and that scales make sense for the country they are asked in. Some classic examples would be:
  • Currency
  • Celsius vs. Fahrenheit
  • Miles vs. Kilometres (and other metric vs. imperial measures)
  • There is also good evidence that some markets are more likely to ‘top box” – pick the extreme ratings – which affects comparative scales such as Net Promoter

A lot of the points above come down to the project being correctly translated or localised. At OnePoll we work with trusted translation providers who have experience specifically with translation for market research purposes and know best how to translate your survey so that the meaning remains the same across markets.

Some examples of the international research we have completed are: eDreams – Detox Holidays – OnePoll Market Research, Sentient Communications/Electrolux – Laundry​ Research – OnePoll Market Research, Hotel reviews and reputation research – Accor – OnePoll