NORAS 2012 is the world's largest piece of online recruitment research. It contains more than 500,000 surveys and 6 million data points
and is the best approximation of job board usage available in the industry. It is however a statistical model and it is important that too
much is not read into statistics. The next three pages explain the NORAS 2012 methodology. You can click to link to each page below.
Part 1: Gathering the Data
Part 2: Making NORAS 2012 data representative of all UK online job seekers
Part 3: Making inferences about non-participating job boards Part 1: Gathering the Data
1) NORAS 2012 data is collected using an online questionnaire.
2) The NORAS 2012 questionnaire contains 142 questions. However, routing is used so respondents see only questions relevant to them and a total of around 35 questions. The survey takes around 8 minutes to complete.
3) The survey asks questions about the participant's demographics, location, qualifications, job seeking status, industry/role, salary and job seeking habits.
4) The questionnaire has been checked for both internal and external validity. Internal validity makes sure that the questions are non-leading and respondents will always be given an answer which is relevant to them. External validity ensures that the research sample can be generalized to repre-sent the wider UK online job seeking population.
5) The NORAS 2012 questionnaire was built with reference to Market Research Society guidelines.
6) People who fill in the questionnaire are entered in to a prize draw. Five prizes of £50 are offered to incentivize completion. £50 is considered high enough to encourage completion but low enough that people don't complete the survey simply to try to win the prize.
7) The NORAS 2012 survey is placed on participating job board sites using a web page overlay . An overlay is used rather than a "pop-up" to avoid blocking by browsers and to ensure the survey is shown to as wide an audience as possible (an example is shown above).
8) The NORAS 2012 overlay is displayed on a representative selection of the job board's entry pages always the home page and in many cases all landing pages (pages which respondents 'land' on after clicking on a link).
9) The overlay controlled by JavaScript enabling it to be shown to 'one in X' visitors to control sample size. This is used to control the number of invitations to take the survey so a balance of responses based on audience size can be achieved.
10) The overlay also contains 'cookies' allowing the survey to be shown only once to each visitor once. It is possible for one person to fill in multiple surveys using a home and work PC for example but it is unlikely.
Part 1: Gathering the Data
Part 2: Making NORAS 2012 data representative of all UK online job seekers
Part 3: Making inferences about non-participating job boards Part 1: Gathering the Data
Click diagram for larger view1) NORAS 2012 data is collected using an online questionnaire.
2) The NORAS 2012 questionnaire contains 142 questions. However, routing is used so respondents see only questions relevant to them and a total of around 35 questions. The survey takes around 8 minutes to complete.
3) The survey asks questions about the participant's demographics, location, qualifications, job seeking status, industry/role, salary and job seeking habits.
4) The questionnaire has been checked for both internal and external validity. Internal validity makes sure that the questions are non-leading and respondents will always be given an answer which is relevant to them. External validity ensures that the research sample can be generalized to repre-sent the wider UK online job seeking population.
5) The NORAS 2012 questionnaire was built with reference to Market Research Society guidelines.
6) People who fill in the questionnaire are entered in to a prize draw. Five prizes of £50 are offered to incentivize completion. £50 is considered high enough to encourage completion but low enough that people don't complete the survey simply to try to win the prize.
7) The NORAS 2012 survey is placed on participating job board sites using a web page overlay . An overlay is used rather than a "pop-up" to avoid blocking by browsers and to ensure the survey is shown to as wide an audience as possible (an example is shown above).
8) The NORAS 2012 overlay is displayed on a representative selection of the job board's entry pages always the home page and in many cases all landing pages (pages which respondents 'land' on after clicking on a link).
9) The overlay controlled by JavaScript enabling it to be shown to 'one in X' visitors to control sample size. This is used to control the number of invitations to take the survey so a balance of responses based on audience size can be achieved.
10) The overlay also contains 'cookies' allowing the survey to be shown only once to each visitor once. It is possible for one person to fill in multiple surveys using a home and work PC for example but it is unlikely.
