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Best Practices for Conducting Secure and Reliable Online Jury Research
Online jury research is a practice growing in acceptance and is becoming an increasingly important weapon for litigators as they discover more about its effectiveness. In addition, because litigators can use this online tool to cost-effectively poll so many more jurors, legal professionals are using online panels for a much wider range of cases.
The barriers have fallen, in large part due to advances in Web technology that ensure two critical aspects of online jury research: 1) It can be done in a secure, highly controlled environment; and 2) It delivers reliable data.
Sharon Shofner-Meyer, president of online jury research firm LookingGlass (http://www.lookingglassjuries.com/), a litigation attorney and litigation product designer and an expert in online jury research, cautions that while we're seeing a marked increase in its use, it is important to maintain credibility, usefulness and validity of doing such crucial research in an online environment.
“To put it bluntly, until recently you could not guarantee with total confidence that such sensitive research could be securely done online,” Shofner-Meyer says. “But today, such tools [are in place] as user authentication, locked-down servers, session management and encryption techniques that prevent hacking. All online jury research should be done behind firewalls and with password-protected log-ins.” Video streaming is becoming an increasingly important tool for online jury research, particularly for lawyers who want to test out a variety of arguments in front of the mock jurors. “We can now ensure that no part of the study ' video included ' can be captured, forwarded or viewed in public places,” Shofner-Meyer says.
The good news is that by employing careful safeguards and best practices, you can be assured to get accurate and actionable results ' results that are comparable to what you'd get using telephone or in-person mock juries.
Three Major Areas of Concern
The questions Shofner-Meyer hears most frequently all rise from the basic fact that with online jury research, you will not meet the mock jurors in person, interact with them, or see their behavior during the course of the research.
Specifically, those concerns are:
- How do you know you're getting a sample that is representative of the jurisdiction where your case will be heard?
Are the jurors who they say they are? Since you never meet them face-to-face, how do you know they aren't misrepresenting themselves? - How can you glean the valid and actionable information via an online questionnaire? We've all seen online polls for everything from favorite movies to rating photos. Is that really a good method for jury research?
- How can you be sure the jurors are engaged with the research and not just randomly filling in a survey? And is the data secure?
To help answer these questions, I turned to Dr. David Meder, an independent trial consultant with a PhD in Psychology and a specific expertise in online surveys and statistical analysis who has consulted with Fortune 500 corporations and top law firms on the intricacies of online and in-person research for over 20 years.
He discussed a recent case (PL1) where online jury research was done, and provided key insights into the design and management of an online study and specifically addressed the concerns mentioned above. In other words, was the data secured? The sample representative? The results actionable? The mock jurors engaged?
PL1 involved testing jurors' perceptions and attitudes about a products liability suit brought by a 35-year-old man who claimed the medication he was prescribed as a teenager caused arthritis as an adult. He claimed the drug company failed to warn of the dangers and to fully test the drug before, and during, its time on the market. The surrogate jurors were presented with the key issues and watched streaming video of the attorney's arguments.
“Overall, this is a stellar example of using best practices for online research ' it's best in class not just in jury research, but any research.” Meder says. Let's look at why Meder came to that conclusion, and how this research overcame the most commonly heard objections.
Validating the Jury:
How Do You Know Who You're Getting?
There seems to be an assumption that companies engaging in online jury research are just putting polls out on the Internet and hoping to get back a bunch of responses. After all, that is exactly how many surveys work on the Web. “Do you like X movie?” Click here. “Y restaurant?” Click here.
But that's not what was done in PL1. The respondents were all recruited and screened by phone first. In addition, each individual was asked to provide personal information ' driver's licenses, for example ' that could be cross-checked for age and residency. Also, people who made it to the jury pool were given password-protected access to the poll.
“That's critical to getting a representative sample,” Meder notes. “In this particular instance, they recruited by phone until they got a representative sample of the venue as compared to census data (based on seven characteristics ' gender, age, race/ethnicity, income, education, employment status, and marital status.) The fact that the information was cross-checked and the use of password-protected access to the system is above and beyond. From a purely statistical standpoint, I am convinced this is a representative jury, which is critical for many reasons. Chief among them is accurate analysis of the results. You can say with much more confidence things like this particular argument resonates particularly well with this demographic profile.” See, PL1 Juror Pool, below.
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Lesson 1: Don't poll randomly, as so many Internet surveys do. Recruit members the old-fashioned way, by calling potential jurors until you get a representative sample. Employ safeguards such as identity cross-checking and password protection.
Quality In, Quality Out:
Better Questions, More Useful Results
How does a litigator construct his or her questions to get maximum value, deeper insights and actionable information that can be used to the greatest advantage at trial?
“The real Achilles' heel in a good deal of jury research from my standpoint is crafting the online questions,” Meder says. “It's an art and a science, and sometimes even jury experts don't get it right.”
Meder points to the two mistakes he sees most frequently in polling of all types, from consumer testing to political candidate preferences: asking the questions too broadly and presenting hard-to-measure options for the answers.
“If the question is too broad, the responses are hard to interpret,” Meder explains. “So, for example, rather than ask, 'What's your general attitude toward pharmaceutical companies?,' pose it this way: 'Do you think pharmaceutical companies are concerned for your safety?' or 'Do you think they put profits before safety?'”
The more granular and specific the question, the more useful the results.
According to Meder, the way the responses are designed is equally crucial to getting good data. “You don't want to have options like, 'a) I trust pharmaceutical companies; b) I think pharmaceutical companies are too big; c) Pharmaceutical companies should be highly regulated.'”
Instead, you want to offer respondents a continuum of options. “The best are either a numeric 0-5 scale, for example, or degrees of intensity (Strongly agree, Agree, Neither agree nor disagree, Disagree, Strongly disagree),” Meder advises.
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