Your voice matters. We’ll pay you for it.
The average study is a two-hour focus group and pays $100-$150
How does it work?
For a Company to sell its product or service, it must know what is important to the everyday people who use it. Smart companies ask you, their customers, what matters to them.
We help them to understand the opinions that matter: yours. In order to make this happen, every day companies pay people like you to participate in paid surveys, focus groups, round table discussions, product testing, etc, in order to gain your feedback. More and more, these kinds of studies are taking place to give people the chance to tell companies what they want. Those who participate not only get paid for their opinions, they also represent thousands of people like themselves.
When we pay you for your opinions, your feedback is vital to important research on how companies can improve their products, services, advertising, and overall performance.
Typically, these discussions pay from $50 to $150 for one to two hours, depending on the topic, qualifications, etc. When you sign up, your information goes into our secure system. When we begin a new paid survey or focus group, we contact you via telephone or email to request your participation. Then, you will go through a very brief screening process over the phone or online in order to find out if you are one of the consumers our client is looking for. After qualifying, you will be given a location, date and time for the survey or focus group. All you have to do is show up!
For more information on how focus groups work, check out this detailed video from TED describing why companies conduct focus groups and pay participants.
Watch CNN”s Frank Luntz describe our recruiting process
Your privacy matters. We guard it.
Today, we must all be vigilant about our privacy and personal information. Cypher Research believes in every person’s right to privacy and treating all information securely.
Cypher Research guarantees that:
- We will never try to sell you anything. All we will ever ask you for is your opinions.
- No one else will ever try to sell you anything using any information you provide to us.
- Your information will not be sold, transferred or provided in any way to any third party.
- If you opt-in to SMS reminders for your appointments, your number will not be sold, transferred or provided in any way to any third party, and it will be used ONLY for your participation in our research.
- Your information will ONLY be used to determine your eligibility to participate in our research.
- Your information is sent over HTTPS, stored securely and encrypted.
- Your answers to all questions are visible only to Cypher Research recruiters.
- No one, not even the research team, will have access to your last name or any contact info.
Cypher Research is committed to safeguarding the privacy of all participants in our research and all panelists who sign up on our website. We will never sell your information to any third party, and the only calls or emails you will receive from us will be to request your participation in research.
If you have any questions about the market research and public opinion industry, the Council for Marketing and Opinion Research provides a toll-free hotline designed to answer questions and concerns from the public about our work. For more information please visit their website at www.cmor.org, and if you require further information about the industry in general, call their hotline at 1-800-887-2667.
What do you do with my information?
First, Cypher Research will never ask you for any highly sensitive information like social security numbers, account numbers, etc.
Because of the nature of what we do, we do need to ask a lot of questions, though. This can seem a little scary, and we understand. Here’s how we treat any answers you give to the questions we ask:
- Responses that are seen by any client or researcher are masked. This means they can see your answers, but not who gave those responses.
- Your last name is never seen by anyone but the recruiting team. Researchers will only know you by your first name and last initial.
- The contact info we ask (usually phone number and email address) is only for the recruiting team to reach you for purposes of scheduling and confirming your appointment. It is never given to anyone else.
So, why do you ask all of these questions?
Every question we ask is designed to make sure the research team is reaching the people they need for their research study.
Here are some examples of questions we often ask and why we ask them:
- “What is your age/gender/race/ethnicity?” – These basic demographic questions are to ensure an appropriate mix of people in the study. For most studies, where we need to represent the general population. To do this, we can’t have a group of people that is, for example, all white, or all male. Diversity matters! That said, if we are researching, for example, a women’s hair care product, we would want to speak only to women. It’s always about the research needs.
- “What are your children’s ages?” – We sometimes do studies about education, or kids’ products like diapers or toys. For research like this we need to speak to parents of children of certain ages, so we have to ask!
- “What is your household income?” – For most studies we need to include people from across the income spectrum. This question insures a diversity of experiences and opinions. For some studies, for instance if we are studying the effects of minimum wage laws, we would need to speak to people in a specific income bracket. Again, it’s always about the research.
Sometimes we research people who drive specific cars, who use a certain kind of phone, or even people of specific body types or health status. The range of possibilities is endless! The questions are always there for the sole purpose of identifying the people are research team needs to speak to.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just tell people who you are looking for?
Yes! Since we only get paid for the people we recruit, that would make our job easier.
But part of conducting quality, legitimate research means making sure we are recruiting the right people. While most people are honest with the responses they give, there are always a few people who will try to get into a study just for the money and they’ll give the answers they think we want. If we told them we needed people who, for example, have a certain car, they might be tempted to say they do, even if they don’t. Then, on the day of research, their responses would taint the study, since they wouldn’t really have any experience with the vehicle we are studying. That’s bad!
We do everything we can to efficiently contact the right people. That means we only email or call you if we think you might qualify for the study. And when we post studies to Facebook, we tell you everything we can about it up front.
Do you make money from getting all these responses? Are you selling this information?
Never! As a research company, we are only paid for the people we actually recruit into studies. If we need to recruit 10 people, we get paid for recruting 10 people only. Whether we screen 50 people or 500 people, we only get paid for the recruits. So actually, we make more money the *fewer* people we screen.
Selling information is a big business, so it’s understandable why some people would think we might do that. However, the companies that do sell information make money by harvesting massive amounts of information from big data sources. We could never make money by programming all of these questionnaires one at a time, or by targeting only specific people like we do.
To be clear, Cypher Research 100% guarantees that your information will NEVER be sold, given, or transferred to any third party. You will never receive any further contact from our clients promoting their products, you will never be put on any sales email list, you will not receive any robo-calls resulting from your participation.
The only thing that will EVER be done with your information is for Cypher Research to contact you about the research study you applied for, and to inform you of any other research opportunities that you may qualify for in the future.
What if I never want to be contacted again?
No problem!
If a recruiter calls you, you can simply tell them to please take your information out of our system.
If you have been emailed and you never want to receive another email from us, simply reply to the email with the word REMOVE in the subject line. You will be removed within 24-48 hours and you will never receive another email from us.
This sounds OK so far, but how is my information stored? Is it secured?
First, understand that we never store any sensitive information like accounts, passwords, etc.
The most sensitive information we have is your name, address and email.
All information we collect is collected through HTTPS for security, and it is stored in an encrypted database that is only accessible to our internal recruiting team and IT staff. No researcher, client, or any third party can access it.