Demographic questionnaires, also referred to as profiling surveys, are designed to collect important information about participants. Their primary purpose is to ensure that members meet the criteria necessary for research eligibility. These surveys help identify demographic details and confirm compliance with specific research requirements.

After the profiling survey, organizations can conduct further research using targeted questionnaires for specific respondent groups, known as recruitment surveys or screeners.

To illustrate, consider a high-end automotive company seeking public opinions on its 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 who represent its target market.

Reprofiling Best Practices

While certain responses, such as birthdate, remain constant, others, such as address and marital status, can change over 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 up to date. Reach out to members directly with a reprofiling survey.

1. Create a survey in your survey tool to update your data. Base it on your original profiling survey; no need to recreate the wheel!

2. Update the P2 engine to use your reprofiling survey as the new source for all relevant P2 points, and ensure all answers are updated for 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.
   • Consider providing 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 (in this example, via 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.