Certainly sampling and the “validity” of respondent data is a component but not the whole story (even that is subjective, what is valid? how do we determine invalidity?).

This all needs to be formalized & broadcast far & wide.

Unless the majority of the industry buys into the definitions it isn’t going to be widely adopted nor respected & trusted by buyers of research.

We need to define standards for what is :

• good sample vs not-so-good.
• good sample vs not-so-good.
• good online execution
• best practices on usability (accessibility needs to be addressed but accessibility does not equal usability), etc , etc.

And all this needs to be affordable.

Much of this exists but most is not universally agreed upon.

Who decides what is good & what is not?

And assuming we can get our act together & create such standards, how do we disseminate this ” online research gospel”.

Tall order :-)

Cheers