Download FAR 2025/36 The utility of an online panel for recruitment to a national harvest survey

This document reports on whether an online panel could be used to recruit fishers to a national harvest survey by marine recreational fishers. These national surveys have been carried out in 2011–12, 2017–18, and 2022–23 using screening for a fisher within a household. The households are sampled using a standard probability-based sampling scheme using Census meshblocks as the first stage of sampling and dwellings within the meshblock as the second stage of sampling. Recruitment like this contributes about half the cost of running a harvest survey. In contrast, market research companies recruit people to online panels typically from reward programmes. This study used a sample of 1000 people from the Omnijet online panel survey run by Verian. Respondents who identified as fishers were asked questions about their fishing behaviour. The demographic characteristics of these fishers and their behaviour was compared to those of the most recent national harvest survey. The online panel sample was materially different from the national harvest survey sample. The conclusions of this study are that in order to be comparable to the previous surveys, an online panel should therefore not be used for recruitment.