Nationally representative polling

We offer same-day, nationally representative polling. This polling achieves a demographic balance that reflects the UK population within a ±1% margin of census data - by age, gender, region, SEG (socio-economic group), EU 2016 vote and the last General Election. We can also run nationally representative polls of Scotland.

Costs are determined on a per-question basis (see our pricing page). Bespoke pricing can be arranged for much longer surveys.

Snapshot consumer research

Our snapshot consumer polling provides rapid insights into consumer attitudes and behaviors. This is very fast, and you can get as many as 1,000 responses within 5 minutes or 10,000 within an hour. These are not perfectly representative (see above for our nationally representative survey offering) but gives a strong basis for quick consumer research. We also provide a ‘segmentation report’ page which allows you to breakdown the results by all other profiling we hold on-file for respondents.

Prices begin at 10p per response. So for 500 respondents answering 5 questions, that would come to £250 (+ VAT). More details on our pricing page.

Targeted surveys and niche subgroups

We hold extensive profiling data on respondents, allowing us to target very niche subgroups of the population. If we don’t already hold the profiling data for a specific audience you wish to target, we are happy to launch a free IR (incidence rate) test survey - to see how many respondents would qualify and what the costs of surveying them would be.

Recent targeted surveys we have ran include:

• 1500 tradesmen across the UK
• 1500 new-build residents who have lived in their homes less than 18 months
• 400 Conservative Party members
• 3000 readers of The Sun
• 1000 parents (of children under 18) who claim incapacity benefits
• 500 primary and 500 secondary school teachers
• 4000 Reform UK voters

Bulk data provision

If you are running large-scale surveys of the UK population we can do bulk data provision. Depending on the nature of the survey, we could deliver 10,000 responses within several hours, 50,000 in 24 hours or up to 100,000 in a week. Pricing would fall under the same category as ‘snapshot consumer polling’ (see our pricing page).

Previous projects involving this include us supplying sample for large MRP (multi-level regression and post-stratification) voting intention polls, such as this survey with Electoral Calculus. Or this project with University College London where we surveyed 30,000 people to track the mental health impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Direct sample provision

If you already use an external survey scripting software (such as SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics or Walr), we can connect it to our platform to directly provide sample. Prices start at £1.50 CPI (with a £350 minimum project fee) and depend on survey length and screening criteria. If there are screening questions within your survey, we’d encourage you to share them with us and we can implement them on our side, ensuring a much lower screen-out rate for the survey.

It should be noted that a lower percentage of our panel respondents do external surveys versus doing them directly on our platform. This doesn’t pose an issue for most surveys, but if you are surveying very targeted or niche subgroups, or need results faster, we would encourage you to run the survey directly on our platform.

How does Find Out Now target specific audiences?

We hold extensive profiling data on our panellists. As most respondents visit the site everyday to answer questions, over time we have built up a robust bank of profiling questions, this continuous profiling enabling us to target specific audiences precisely. We can then directly target respondents who meet certain criteria, allowing us to give very accurate feasibilities and conduct surveys at pace.

Can I survey the same respondents again?

Yes! As most of our respondents visit the site everyday to answer questions, it is very easy for us to retarget respondents from previous surveys.

In addition, if there was a certain subgroup which you wanted to regularly retarget (such as people who meet certain screening criteria) we would happily run a profiler of the whole panel for no extra charge. That way you could quickly and reliably run surveys of that audience, without having to run new screening questions each time.

What survey features can your platform use?

Our survey platform includes all features one might expect, such as radio, checkbox, grid matrices, open text, routing, logic, multimedia and more. If your survey includes any features which you’re not sure are supported by our platform, please get in touch and we can discuss with you in more detail.

How long can the survey be?

Although most of the surveys on our platform are short (often 7 questions or fewer) we can accommodate surveys of any length. In some cases, we may offer our respondents bonus incentives to guarantee a higher response rate, or split the survey into sections which are asked over several days to ensure better data quality.

Can you append demographic data to my survey?

We can append extensive demographic data to the final survey results. This includes standard variables such as age, gender and region, and the full list we provide for our standardised segmentation reports include over 75 unique variables.

Note, if you want to guarantee full coverage for your survey of a specific demographic variable, please let us know in advance of setting up the survey.

How many respondents can Find Out Now reach?

Find Out Now can reach up to 100,000 respondents daily. Our feasibilities are front-loaded, so if we can reach 1000 of a certain demographic in 5 days, most of those would come in the first 24 hours. Full details of our panel breakdown can be found in our Panel Book .

Does Find Out Now do MRP polling?

Yes, Find Out Now does provide MRP polling. For clients who are interested in MRP (multi-level regression and post-stratification) surveys, we work with a partner organization to provide them. Please contact us for more details.

How do I set up a survey on Find Out Now? Do I have to script the questions myself?

If your survey is relatively simple and you feel capable, you can directly script the survey yourself from our homepage (which we’d then moderate before launching). However, the vast majority of our clients will email us with their questions, and we will do the scripting for them. This saves them time, but also allows us to inform what works best on our platform and ensure everything is coded correctly.

How quickly can I get results?

When your survey launches we will send you a live link to see the responses as they come in. For consumer snapshot surveys, we get hundreds of responses within the first few minutes, so the survey finishes almost instantaneously and you can immediately see the final results.

Nationally representative surveys aren’t quite as fast, but are still very quick. A N=1000 survey launched at peak times could finish within 2 hours. Once the survey is finished we will send you filtered data tables (as to make it nationally representative, we have to process the raw data) with the final results.

In what format will the results come in?

By default for all surveys we send a ‘segmentation report’ which both lets you see final results and break those down by all demographic data we hold on-file for respondents. Then for nationally representative surveys we also send finalised datatables, with the final filtered results (as opposed to raw data) in a data table format.

If you have any specific requests on how you receive the final results, let us know and we will endeavour to deliver it in your preferred format.

How do your prices and payment work?

Pricing varies based on sample size and targeting requirements. All details can be found on our pricing page.

For payment, we will normally issue an invoice after the survey has completed.

Where do the respondents come from?

Find Out Now gathers responses from daily visitors to Pick My Postcode, a free daily lottery website with a large, active user base across the UK. Survey questions are presented as part of the website’s Survey Draw, and respondents answer voluntarily. Prizes on Pick My Postcode can only be claimed during a limited time window, which is why so many of our members visit the site daily. Of the 200,000 daily visitors to Pick My Postcode, around half (~100,000) will complete a survey.

Are the results good-quality? How is Find Out Now different from other market research panels?

Our data is better quality than traditional online panels. A test conducted with Lucid (now Cint) found that the reconciliation rate for our respondents (the number of responses removed due to low quality) was 4x lower than their own panel.

In addition to our usual data quality checks, there are several reasons why Find Out Now has better data quality than other panels:

• Firstly, most of our surveys are generally shorter. And when people run surveys with us, they are presented standalone, rather than bundled in a longer ‘omnibus’ survey which respondents have to do in one sitting. This means they are more engaged when doing our surveys, and the data quality is higher.
• Secondly, our respondents didn’t sign up to do online surveys and we don’t pay them. Although it may seem counter-intuitive that this leads to better quality data, often the people who sign up to do online surveys are very different to the public at large, leading to distorted polling results. Similarly, offering respondents money to complete surveys creates bad incentives, such as respondents rushing surveys or giving false information - which we avoid.
• Thirdly, there is no reason for respondents to lie. When our respondents on Pick My Postcode go to the Survey Draw, they have the option to not do the survey (selecting ‘No thanks, not today’) and still see the winning postcode. As such, with there being no direct gain to doing the survey and respondents only doing the surveys because they want to, the data quality is higher.

Is Find Out Now accredited?

Find Out Now is a member of the British Polling Council and Market Research Society, and abide by their rules.

As part of these rules, if a client publishes the results of a UK social or political survey in the public realm, Find Out Now are obliged to publish the full data tables of that specific survey within 2 working days. These can be found on our Insights page.

How does the nationally representative sampling work?

Find Out Now uses two proprietary algorithms, Optimal Sequential Inclusion (OSI) and Optimal Random Elimination (ORE), to achieve a demographic balance that reflects the UK population within a ±1% margin of census data. OSI selects participants, and ORE adjusts quotas to prevent over-representation, ensuring accuracy and reliability in results.

OSI works in real time with Find Out Now's survey sampling data stream to ensure the collected sample adheres to pre-defined demographic quotas. This algorithm makes real time sampling decisions based on demographic quotas. As the resultant sample is already very close to the pre-defined, the use of post-stratification methods is minimised. For example, terminal weights produced by raking are close to one and sample variance is not unnecessarily inflated. In addition, any over-sampling for the survey is minimised.

ORE is a post-stratification method that selects a subsample which adheres to pre-defined demographic quotas from the raw sample, while maintaining the highest possible sample size. Despite achieving the same purpose as traditional raking, ORE doesn’t weight the data (up-weighting lesser represented groups within a set sample) but instead selects the most representative individual respondents from a larger sample.

Is nationally representative polling the same as Omnibus polling?

As we allow clients to run standalone nationally representative surveys, this is often compared to Omnibus polling, but there are some important differences.

Omnibus polling is where lots of survey questions are amalgamated into one larger survey, which the polling company then runs at regular intervals. This allows them to save on costs by amalgamating lots of smaller projects, but at the cost of potentially reducing data quality - as respondents have to answer lots of questions, and you don’t know what questions were asked before yours. This can also be slower, as you can only run your survey at pre-set times.

By contrast, Find Out Now’s model is different. Because we have 100,000 respondents answering surveys everyday, we don’t have to bundle smaller surveys together, but instead run them standalone. We can also run the survey as soon as you’re ready to launch it - allowing for a much faster turnaround time.

How does Find Out Now comply with data protection?

This privacy policy from Pick My Postcode outlines our relationship with panel members and the handling of their data, with the “Pick Survey Tool” section being particularly relevant.

As the data controller, we process survey responses and provide clients with fully anonymised results, with all personally identifiable information removed. While panel members can, in most cases, be re-identified by us using a separate data set (inaccessible to clients), this dataset ensures that results are pseudonymous in our possession but fully anonymous for clients. Therefore, no joint processing or controller agreement is needed.

Separate terms and privacy policies govern our relationship with clients and researchers on Find Out Now, available here: https://findoutnow.co.uk/terms-and-conditions and https://findoutnow.co.uk/privacy-policy.

For panel members who opt in, we send daily reminder emails following each draw. Members can unsubscribe through their Pick My Postcode account settings, and each email includes an opt-out link. We also automatically unsubscribe inactive members. The data underlying survey reports and live links is retained as long as a respondent is a Pick My Postcode member. However, respondents have rights under the Data Protection Act to update or delete responses.

If you have any questions regarding our data protection, please get in touch and we can put you in contact with our DPO (Data Protection Officer).