Market analysis of wearable health devices among older adults

The brief

Size and describe the market for wearable health devices among adults over 65 in three markets, including non-users and lapsed users as well as current owners.

The problem

An online-only sample of over-65s skews heavily towards the digitally confident, which in a study about technology adoption is the single worst bias the design could carry. The finding would have been predetermined by the method.

What we did

• Mixed-mode design: online, CATI and face-to-face fieldwork, with mode recorded on every response
• Quota controls on digital confidence as well as age, gender and region
• Questionnaire simplified for telephone administration without changing the measures
• Mode effects estimated on an overlap subsample and reported alongside the results

The outcome

Ownership among respondents reached by telephone and face to face was less than half the level found online, in the same markets and the same field window. The blended estimate was substantially below the client's prior, which had been built on online-only research.

The mode effect analysis is what made the finding usable, because it let the client quantify how much of their earlier picture had been an artefact of sampling.