At Focaldata, we want to give clients the most representative, accurate data at the fastest speed possible. We've always wanted to reduce the time taken to produce weighted data (previously a manual step). We're now the first company to automate it: when you use a preset weighted audience (e.g. a UK nationally representative sample) you get weighted data on completion – automatically and for free in the results dashboard. We've also added the ability to publish your results (weighted or otherwise) and share with anyone with a web link.

ℹ️ What is the difference between weighted and unweighted data?

An unweighted result is the number of raw respondents who answered a question in a particular way, e.g. 550 out of 1,000 respondents said that the economy was their most pressing issue.

To ensure the results are truly representative of a given population, in addition to strict quota monitoring during fieldwork, Focaldata then applies weights to each respondent. This corrects for any imbalance between the sample we have collected and the composition of the target population. These weights are calculated by measuring this imbalance, and ensuring that respondents from under-represented demographics in the sample (e.g. retired ethnic minorities) are weighted more highly than respondents belonging to an over-represented demographic (e.g. young people in London). Weighted data is the gold standard for any research into a nationally or regionally representative audience.

Automatic weighted results

We're constantly trying to find ways to reduce the time taken from launching a project to getting analysis-ready data into the hands of clients. We've now built an automated weighting system for the most frequently used representative samples so they get applied automatically when the project completes. You no longer need to add weights yourself or pay for additional support to add them for you. In most cases, this also removes the need for weighted data tables (and the associated cost and time required) – you can use our results dashboard to explore the weighted data and then download the weighted data for deeper analysis.

You can see how this works by viewing the weighted results from the most recent issue of our newsletter Bi_Focal:

See weighted results in action 📊

Publish results to web

Teams often need to publish results to share with stakeholders or partners and other interested parties – but they can't invite them to their account. So we've made it possible to publish results to the web and then share a link with anyone so they can access the results. Someone with the link can't access anything else in your account so all your projects remain locked down and secure. You can see this in action here.