Are our patient panels representative? That’s an important question, we hear that especially from those of you who are experienced with general population panels where it is critical to match the demographics of the underlying group.
The Rare Patient Voice panel is what we in market research call a convenience sample, since we recruit patients at patient events like walks and conferences. So you’d expect them to be more involved and engaged than typical patients. However, these patients refer others, from their support groups and Facebook groups, so we also include many who are not so fully engaged.
The end result is when the client has supplied demographics of a patient group, we’ve found our panel to match up well. If you or your client can provide these, we are happy to compare them with the demographics of our panel and we’ll share that information with you.
With rare diseases, obviously the population is small, and often there isn’t any choice but to take anyone we can recruit. But you can always apply quotas to match the underlying population as necessary.
The key indicator is how well do the results of studies using our panel help our clients in predicting the market and optimizing their offering. And the responses we’ve heard from clients have been overwhelming positive.
