The research findings are based on over 1,200 reviews / comments of actual mattress topper owners collected from dozens of different sources, including online message / discussion boards, retailers' websites, product review websites, and personal interviews.
Sources
Message / Discussion Boards
In many cases, owner experiences collected from many message / discussion boards make up the majority of our research data. Message boards are generally the best source for getting unbiased and authentic product reviews from actual owners. This is mainly because they tend to exist in near obscurity (most don't rank high in the search engines), are made up of a tight-knit group of people, and often have safeguards against suspicious contributors, such as someone who appears from nowhere to contribute to a product-related discussion.
In case if you don't know, message boards generally operate by someone posting a question and then others reply with answers. In this case, someone typically asks others what mattress topper they recommend or don’t recommend. People then reply with their opinions often based on their own mattress topper ownership experience.
Retailers' Websites
Online retailers such as Amazon, Overstock.com, Wal-Mart and several others provide their customers with the ability to rate and review products that they purchased from them. We have generally found the reviews on these websites to be credible and helpful.
Product Review Websites
A small amount of our research data may come from product review websites, such as Epinions or Viewpoints. Generally, we regard these sources to be the least credible since virtually anyone can post a product review and are sometimes paid to do so. Consequently, we include into our data only those reviews that we regard as most credible.
Personal Interviews
On occasion, we include owner data from personal interviews that we conduct. While the number of these interviews is small, the amount and quality of owner information they provide is often excellent.
Large Sample Sizes + Diverse Sources = Accurate Findings
The sample size of at least 1,200 actual owner experiences is large enough in our opinion to provide accurate findings. We at Sleep Like The Dead are not expert statisticians, but we believe that our findings, especially for the satisfaction ratings, have a maximum margin of sampling error of ±4 percentage points. We believe this because no matter how much data (information from owner reviews / comments) we add to each mattress topper type, our findings do not extend beyond a range of a few percentage points.
In addition, in most cases no one source makes up more than 20% of the total number of reviews / comments included in our data. This diversity of sources helps to ensure that you are getting as accurate and unbiased information as possible.
Safeguards To Ensure Precise and Impartial Information
To further ensure accurate findings, several measures were taken. Namely, no data was collected from those who indicated that they have slept on a particular topper for less than three days since this is often not enough time to form a solid opinion one way or the other.
In addition, no data was collected from an owner review / comment that was older than six years. 90% of owner data is three years old or less.
Further, in cases where it was not clear if the reviewer owned the topper, the review / comment were not included in the data. Owners were identified when they openly said they owned a particular topper, referred to the topper as “my topper” or identified themselves as an actual owner in some other obvious, non-ambiguous way.
More Information on Comfort Rating
The comfort rating for each type of mattress topper is the percentage of owners who said that the topper improved the comfort of their mattress. The percentage was computed by dividing the number of reviews / comments that indicated the topper improves comfort by the total number of reviews / comments for the topper (sample size).
A mattress topper-pad was viewed in our research as improving a the comfort of a mattress if any or all of the following conditions were met in an owner review / comment:
- The topper was explicitly described as improving comfort.
- The topper was described as allowing better sleep and or less movement at night.
- The topper was recommended to others.
- The owner stated that they like the mattress topper.
FAQ
Q: Do
you have an economic relationship with manufacturers, retailers
and advertisers? In other words, are your research findings
biased?
A: In a word, no. Our mission is to help people sleep
better and this can only be achieved by presenting unbiased
and truthful information.
As a result, we receive NO compensation of any kind
from any company, organization or individual to affect in
any way or degree the content of our website including our
product / owner research.
We do run advertisements for various sleep-related products
and services on our website through Google which automatically
and independent of us selects which ads and advertisers to
display. This advertising in no way affects our website content
or research results.
In addition, our research findings can be independently
verified by anyone with a computer and internet connection,
given that they are willing to invest enough time and effort.
To do so, input queries into a search engine, especially Google,
that contain keywords such as "message board", "discussion",
"thread", "post", "reviews",
"ratings" etc. and then the name of the product
or brand you seek to find actual owner information about.
Each product category or brand will usually have its own specific
keywords which need to be used to achieve optimal results.
And searching many pages into the search results for each
query is often necessary to find relevant information.
Q: Can I submit a mattress pad / topper review to be included
in your research results?
A: No. We don't accept unsolicited reviews because we simply
cannot verify their credibility. Our sources for information
are only online message boards, retailers' websites, product
review websites and personal interviews.