Mattress Topper-Pad Reviews > Research Methodology & Sources
Mattress Topper Research Sources and Methodology
The research findings are based on over 24,000 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 24,000 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.
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 four 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 Owner Satisfaction 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.