RankingsLatAm User Panel Terms of Service
1. Panel Objective
The RankingsLatAm User Panel is composed exclusively of real users of digital products and services whose purpose is to contribute to improving the quality of applications, platforms, and services available in Latin America.
The panel's objective is not to reward or penalize any company, but rather to provide objective, independent, and useful information to help organizations better understand their users' experience.
All research is conducted under criteria of editorial and methodological independence.
2. Fundamental Principles
All panel members accept the following principles:
independence and impartiality;
responses based exclusively on personal experiences;
absolute confidentiality;
respect for privacy;
absence of conflicts of interest;
quality and consistency of responses;
continuous improvement of products and services.
3. Joining Process
Joining the panel consists of six stages.
Stage 1 – Application
The applicant completes a form providing, among other information:
.country of residence
.age
.sectors where they work
.applications and services they regularly use
.languages spoken
They also expressly declare:
.that the information provided is true;
.that they will only respond to questions about their own experiences;
.that they understand the privacy policy;
.that they accept the processing of their data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union.
Stage 2 – Eligibility Assessment
Each application is reviewed individually.
Not all applications are accepted.
Specific verification includes:
.consistency of information
.quality of profile
.geographic diversity
.demographic diversity
.absence of conflicts of interest
Stage 3 – Independence Assessment
In order to preserve the objectivity of the panel, certain individuals are not permitted to participate in research related to specific industries or companies.
These include:
.employees of the company being evaluated;
.recent former employees;
.external consultants;
.strategic suppliers;
.marketing agencies;
.advertising agencies;
.public relations firms;
.community managers;
.developers of the application being evaluated;
.direct competitors;
.specialized journalists who regularly cover the industry;
.paid influencers;
.brand ambassadors;
.commercial affiliates;
i.ndividuals who receive financial compensation for recommending specific products;
.any other person whose independence could be compromised.
If a panel member subsequently begins working for a company in the evaluated sector, they must inform us so that their participation in related studies is automatically suspended.
4. Validation as a Real User
RankingsLatAm only includes real users.
During the admission process, various validation techniques may be used, including:
.consistency between responses;
.temporal consistency;
.declared usage history;
.specific questions about functionalities;
.questions of practical knowledge;
.attention checks; Statistical analysis of response patterns.
Profiles created solely for survey participation are not accepted.
5. Personal Data Protection
Privacy is one of the Panel's core principles.
Personal data is processed in accordance with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Among other measures:
.minimal collection of personal information;
.use solely for panel administration;
.prohibition of selling personal data;
.separation of participant identity from research responses;
.secure storage;
.restricted access;
.possibility of requesting data modification or deletion;
.right to withdraw from the panel at any time;
.use of anonymized internal identifiers.
Companies receiving results never have access to the participants' identities.
Reports contain only aggregated and statistical information.
6. Panel Quality System
All panelists receive an internal Panel Quality Index (PQI).
This index is never made public and is used exclusively to ensure methodological quality.
The index considers multiple dimensions, including:
consistency between responses
reasonable response time
quality of open-ended responses
stability over time
compliance with care controls
participation history
dropout rate
statistical reliability
absence of automated responses
Participants with low quality may be suspended or removed.
7. Control of Opinion Bias
A common issue in online research is that some participants exhibit a systematic tendency to rate everything extremely well or extremely poorly.
To minimize this phenomenon, RankingsLatAm implements multiple controls.
a) Response Tendency Index
A longitudinal indicator is calculated for each panelist, measuring:
.frequency of extremely positive responses;
.frequency of extremely negative responses;
.rating dispersion;
.historical stability.
Consistently extreme responses trigger additional reviews.
b) Longitudinal Analysis
A survey is not analyzed in isolation.
The participant's historical behavior is studied.
Patterns such as the following are identified:
always rating everything very high or very low;
never using intermediate values;
abrupt changes inconsistent with the historical pattern.
c) Balanced Panel Distribution
Efforts are made to maintain diversity in:
age;
gender;
countries;
d) Detection of Ideological or Commercial Biases
Responses may be reviewed when they show evidence of coordinated campaigns, organized activism, commercial promotion, or systematic disqualifications unsupported by user experience.
e) Statistical Validation
Before incorporating responses into the final database, procedures such as the following may be applied:
.Outlier detection;
.Consistency analysis;
.Multivariate analysis;
.Detection of random responses;
.Detection of duplicates;
.Detection of bots;
.Detection of automatically generated responses.
8. Reasons for Rejection
An application may be rejected for various reasons, including:
.Conflict of interest;
.Inconsistent information;
.Inability to validate the user;
.Indications of fraud;
.Multiple registrations;
.Use of false identities;
.Abusive behavior;
.Use of automated tools;
.low quality of responses in initial evaluations;
.overrepresentation of a profile already sufficiently covered within the panel.
The decision to include panelists rests exclusively with RankingsLatAm and its sole objective is to preserve the scientific quality of the panel.
9. Ongoing Review
Inclusion on the panel does not imply indefinite membership.
All members are re-evaluated periodically.
They may be suspended when:
.their professional status changes;
.conflicts of interest arise;
.the quality of their responses declines;
.they violate the panel's rules;
.relevant inconsistencies are detected.
10. Panelist Commitment
Each member commits to:
.respond only when they are an actual user of the product being evaluated;
.respond honestly;
.base their responses exclusively on their own experiences;
.not accept compensation from companies to modify their opinions;
.report any conflict of interest;
.to contribute to improving the quality of digital products available to millions of users in Latin America.