Google Surveys offers two panels of respondents:
- Internet users reading content on a network of web publisher sites using Google Opinion Rewards for Publishers.
- App users engaging with AdMob rewarded ads shown on app publishers.
The publisher networks uses inferred demographics.
We evaluate the representativeness of a survey by balancing its sample demographics to match the demographics of the target population: adult (18 or older) internet users. We match based on three demographic dimensions: age, gender, and geography. We rely on a combination of government data and internal Google data sources to provide population data sets for the majority of countries available for targeting.
For countries and networks with representative targeting enabled, Google Surveys uses a two-step process to ensure each survey’s representativeness. First, we use stratified sampling to dynamically target respondents with the goal of matching the demographics of the target internet population. Next, we apply post-stratification weighting to more closely match those same demographics of the target internet population. For countries with convenience sampling, we don’t use stratified sampling but still apply weights to the survey results if the demographics of the survey respondents don’t vary too far from our ground truth demographics data. A small subset of our countries don’t have any population data available, so we don’t target or weight for representativity in those countries. You can find more detail about network and weighting availability here.
You can find a full description of the Google Surveys methodology in this whitepaper or in the product overview.
Learn more about the differences between representative samples and convenience samples, and how each option provides relevant data.
AAPOR's Transparency Initiative
Google Surveys is a member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research's (AAPOR) Transparency Initiative. The initiative was founded in 2014 and establishes disclosure standards for organizations who run and publish surveys. By joining the initiative, Google Surveys pledges to uphold these disclosure standards when publishing results.
Learn more about how to follow transparency guidelines of AAPOR's Transparency Initiative when using Google Surveys and check out AAPOR’s website.