Survey Center Online, now known as Survey Center Focus is a Chicago based market research company. They conduct all types of research including, but not limited to, in-person focus groups, online research studies, telephone interviews, and may even want to go shopping with you!
I registered with this survey site back in 2005 and received only 1 – 2 survey a year. I have done about 2 or 3 surveys for them since I joined their panel. Their surveys are interesting and very easy to do, and usually pay $2 or $3. They pay cash for all the surveys, and the payment checks arrived quickly.
In March 2012, they re-introduced their survey panel and changed it’s name to Survey Center Focus. I received an email informing about the change. I didn’t pay attention at that time but recently just noticed the email. Following is part of the email I received:
Greetings from Survey Center Focus! We sent an email earlier this week and haven’t heard from you. Again, you registered with us to participate in paid surveys and focus groups. This is a reminder about a new way to manage your information in our database. You now have access to your private profile which you can customize! Feel free to upload a picture, tell us a bit about yourself, and most importantly keep your information up to date! This will limit the amount of times you have to take online surveys to pre-qualify for studies. The more we know about you, the better we can find projects for which you will qualify. The information you provide will be kept strictly confidential and are used only to help determine participation.
So I went ahead and logged in my account and updated my information. They have those mini profile surveys you can fill out such as information about your employment, health, auto and travel etc. While you are in your profile page, you can indicate what kind of survey/study you prefer to participate. Here is that part of profile page looks like:
As you can see I checked all study types except in-person focus groups. I look forward to hearing from them more especially the higher paying online surveys and focus groups. I sure will update on this.
UPDATE 2019: Survey Center Focus is now the Qualitative Fieldwork Practice of Shapiro+Raj. I am unable to access my account information anymore. So I am guessing they no longer send surveys.
You can visit and sign up with Survey Center Online/Focus Here
Received another focus group invite! didn’t qualify. it’s a $150 in home video study about home improvement.
I received an study invitation today! it’s a 30 minute telephone interview. Unfortunately I didn’t qualify. Here is the email detail:
Dear Mei,
Hello from Survey Center Focus!
We have a paid research study coming up and would like to see if you are interested and available to participate. You would be compensated for your time. Here are the details:
Event Name: Purchasing Study
Event Date: 05/05/14
To qualify, we will ask you to answer a few questions for us when you come into our online system. You may have answered some of these questions before, but we would like you to take a minute to validate that we have the correct information in our system.
Please click the following (“LOGIN”) to get started: LOGIN
Checked this site out today. Looks like primarily a focus group outfit that conducts them in Chicago. They say on their homepage they pay $50-150 per focus group session, comprising of 8-10 people. They also have pics of their facility. Very nice inside. I don’t live in that area so it’s not for me, but for those in the Chicago area it would be worth trying out if interested.
Oh my I just received a survey from them – Disqualified. It has been years since I heard from them last time!! (okay, maybe not years, but at least one or two!)