One of the biggest challenges in Marketing Study and Survey/Poll is how to make the survey results represent the general population. The solution to this challenge is assigning the marginal weights to each respondent. The objective of the marginal weighting process is that the sum of the weights should be close to the whole population. It is not simply make the total weight sum and population close, but also the gaps by geography and by demographics should be as close as possible. Therefore, the weighted survey results from the respondents can be considered as if coming from the whole population.

SM Research has conducted multiple marginal weighting processes for the clients, including some well-known national surveys. We use a special designed multiple converging iteration method, which can assign the weights by one selected geographic level (normally at the Census Subdivision level) and the several key demographic variables (the most common variables are Age & Gender, Households by Size, Household Income).