Annex 2 - methodology for main task 2 (consumer surveys)

• Author: Consumers, Health, Agriculture and Food Executive Agency (European Commission), Deloitte consortium, IPSOS, London Economics
• Pages: 64-71

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Annex 2 Methodology for Main Task 2 (Consumer surveys)

A2.1 Target population

The target population for the consum er surveys were consumers who either let, rented,

bought or sold real estate during the past seven years (since 2010), or who had attempted

to let, rent, buy or sell real estate during this time frame. For consumers who had r ented

or bought real estate, only those who had looked at properties marketed by a r eal estate

agency were included in the survey. For consumers who let or s old real estate, only those

who had worked with a real estate agent to help them find a tenant or buyer were included

in the survey. For more details about the target population and incidence rates, see Section

A2.4.

A2.2 Pilot study

A pilot study was conduct ed to test the length of the questionnaire and to identify if

respondents had any difficulties answering the questions. The pil ot was conducted i n the

UK as the master documents were designed in English. Quotas were set on age, gender,

region and education (based on the general online population aged 18 years old or over)

to ensure that a broad range of respondents took part in the pilot survey. In total, 104

respondents completed the pilot questionnaire.

The average time to completed the pilot questionnaire was 12 minutes. Respondents who

(only) completed the sections on buying or rentin g a property needed, on average, 10

minutes to complete the survey, while respondents who responded t o the sections about

selling/renting out a property took, on average, 14 minutes to complete the survey.

Roughly a quarter of the sample answered all sections of the questionnaire (i.e. they

bought/rented a property and sold a property/found a new tenant); for this group, the

average duration was 18 minutes.

Based on the pilot results, and in consultation with the Commission, Ipsos implemented a

limited number of changes to improve the consumer questionnaire for the mai n stage.

A2.1 Translation of the questionnaire

After the changes in the main questionnaire were agreed upon and all the materials from

the survey were sign ed off, the questionnaire was translated in the local language(s) of

each country. Unique “country and language” versions were produced.

Table 11 (on the next page) presents the list of countries with their corresponding

language(s).