Demographic questionnaires, also known as profiling surveys, serve the purpose of gathering essential information about your members and ensuring they meet the necessary criteria for research eligibility. They are designed to identify demographic details and verify compliance with specific research requirements.

After completing the profiling survey, organizations can conduct further research by employing additional questionnaires targeted at the most suitable group of respondents meeting specific criteria based on their profiles, called recruitment surveys or screeners.

To illustrate, consider a high-end automotive company seeking public opinions on their products. In this scenario, a profile survey becomes crucial for identifying the appropriate audience that can provide valuable information. Questions about gender, age, household income, and interests enable the company to narrow down respondents representing their target market.

Reprofiling Best Practices

While certain responses like birthdate remain constant, others such as address and marital status can change with time. You hope members will proactively update this information using the provided tools, but people are busy. It's important to take a proactive approach to keep member information fresh and up-to-date. Reach out to members directly with a reprofiling survey.

1. Create a survey in your survey tool which is intended to update your data. Base it on your original profiling survey; no need to recreate the wheel!
2. Update the P2 engine with your reprofiling survey as the new source for all relevant P2 points, and ensure all answers are updated within each question.

   Any time you create a new P2 point, you’ll want to ensure that it is built and set to push to Alchemer before receiving the first survey response, especially if the reprofiler survey resides in Alchemer. Any newly created P2 point that is added after a survey has already started and has received responses will not be included in the export file generated by Alchemer.

3. Create an email announcement to launch to members.
   • It is recommended to provide an incentive to encourage receiving the maximum number of responses possible.
   • Sample email language: "We want to get some updated information from you! We know you may have answered some of these questions before and we appreciate your time in answering them again! Ensuring we have the most up-to-date profiling information will help us to continue to tailor [x community] to your interests!"
4. Import the reprofiling survey from your survey provider (this example is through Alchemer).
5. Launch your reprofiling survey to your community. The best practice is to launch a login poll (Force the member to take the survey) and email all members letting them know they will be taken directly into the survey.
6. Send reminder emails periodically.

Launching a reprofiling survey at least once per year is a best practice depending on the community.