eTownPanel is an academic research project funded by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. A project of the Survey Research Unit at the School of Public Affairs, Baruch College / CUNY. It aims to expand the potential of the Internet as a tool for measuring the quality of life in communities across the US and for providing citizen driven feedback on the performance of local governments.

eTownPanel wanted an integrated solution for recruiting panel members and conducting online research. Apart from having industry standard best-practices on recruiting panel members with double opt-in verification, eTownPanel also wanted to segment the data collected via surveys and target future respondents based on detailed demographic and attitudinal profiles.

After reviewing a number custom and packaged software solutions, eTownPanel determined that having a hosted solution was the most cost-effective and efficient approach to meet their needs. With limited technical resources available in-house, eTownPanel was interested in working with a reliable vendor to deliver this system. Using the QuestionPro panel management solution, eTownPanel was quickly able to create and integrate a Panel Portal for recruiting panel members. Now QuestionPro provides the entire backend infrastructure for managing the eTownPanel database of respondents.

The first survey, a research project on the impact and awareness of noise in the neighborhood was fielded within two weeks. The migration of the panel members into the QuestionPro Panel Management solution was an immediate success and the eTownPanel researchers were able to collect data from over 4000 panel members overnight. eTownPanel now conducts surveys every month on a wide range of topics.