Articles

On August 1, 2013, the first reporting period under the Physician Payment Sunshine Act began. Part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka, “Obamacare”), it requires pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to publicly report many types of payments made to physicians, which will be public. The Sunshine Act was intended to bring transparency to these relationships, to minimize manufacturers’ influence on physicians’ prescribing behavior.

The insights industry stands opposed to so-called "push polling," which is not polling at all – it is a form of political campaign messaging or negative phone banking fraudulently disguised as polling. While polling can be properly used to test messages, "push polling" is not a test, but rather an effort to communicate those messages by giving that communication the false appearance of polling.

New Hampshire law restricts political advocacy telephone calls, which it calls "push-polling." Thanks to a reform (S.B. 196) signed into law on April 23, 2014, the Granite State specifically excludes survey and opinion research.

Supervisory monitoring is an essential part of the research process. In order to ensure the proper execution and conduct of interviews, a certain percentage of interviews in all studies are subject to validation and quality control. Researchers also monitor and record for training purposes and to determine that both interviewers and respondents understand the questions being asked.

Although existing regulations on caller identification (caller ID) at the state and federal level apply primarily to telemarketers, or to intent involving fraud or other criminal activity, policymakers are considering legislation prohibiting various deceptive caller ID practices and there are existing state laws that prohibit the intent to falsify or misrepresent caller ID information. This could impact researchers that intentionally block or alter their caller identification information.

Legislation that would have restricted telephone survey research by or for a Missouri state government agency has been defeated.

Governor Maggie Hassan (D) made New Hampshire safe for polling yesterday by signing a bill into law that eliminates her state’s restrictions on legitimate research.

Missouri is considering legislation that would restrict telephone survey research by or for a state government agency.

Thanks to help from researcher Vera Cooley, the Washington State House Committee on Finance amended legislation before passage on February 28, preventing a detrimental impact on the survey, opinion and marketing research profession.

Independent marketing research professional Vera Cooley testified yesterday in defense of respondent incentives at a state legislative committee hearing.