NigeriaPolls · Comparison
Stears and NigeriaPolls
Compared on what you can check: who gets asked, how much of Nigeria is covered, how the fieldwork is verified, and what you may do with the data afterwards.
In short
Stears is a financial data platform. NigeriaPolls is a primary research firm. Financial data tells you what already happened in a market; primary research tells you what has not happened yet, because somebody goes and asks.
If you need capital flows, macro indicators and sector analysis assembled and kept current, that is a data platform. If you need to know whether Nigerians will buy your product at your price, which message lands in Kano, or how a state will vote, no database holds that answer because the question has not been asked yet.
NigeriaPolls fields by telephone, SMS, WhatsApp and in-person interviewing across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, verifies every recorded interview rather than a sample, publishes its methodology in full and licenses published data CC BY 4.0.
Background
What Stears does
Stears is a financial data and AI-research provider for funds, investors and corporates investing in Africa, offered as a subscription data platform: investors take a trial, sign in, and work with financial data, sector research and reports such as its private capital activity series.
If what you need is the financial picture of a market, assembled for you and kept current, that is the category it sits in and it is a reasonable place to look.
Quoted from stears.co. Nothing further is asserted about their methods or pricing.
Our work
What NigeriaPolls does
We are a Nigerian primary research firm. We design and run original studies across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
Some clients arrive with a finished questionnaire. Many arrive with a decision and no clear idea what to ask, which is the more common case and often the more interesting one. We work either way. We will field your instrument as written, or sit down and work out what the decision actually turns on, what can be measured, and which questions will survive contact with a Nigerian respondent. A question that reads well in a boardroom frequently needs rewriting before it works in Hausa on a phone call, and knowing that in advance is most of the job.
Political and electoral
- Voter sentiment and voting intention tracking
- Candidate and party favourability, issue salience
- State, senatorial district and LGA level reads
- Turnout modelling and scenario analysis
- Political risk research for investors and operators
- 1,701 office holders across 36 states and the FCT
Commercial and social
- Brand health tracking, market entry, concept testing
- Pricing research and segmentation
- Customer experience, NPS and employee experience
- Qualitative: focus groups and in-depth interviews
- Mystery shopping and omnibus studies
- Monitoring and evaluation, audience research
How we collect it
Our interviewers are Nigerian and based across the country rather than concentrated in one city, working on our own voice infrastructure connected directly to a Nigerian carrier trunk rather than routed through an overseas gateway. An interviewer who lives in the state being surveyed brings the language and the local knowledge with them.
Four channels: live telephone interviewing for long and complex questionnaires, SMS for short instruments and respondents without smartphones, WhatsApp for longer conversational questionnaires, and in-person interviewing by field teams deployed into the specific local government areas a sample requires. That fourth channel decides whether a study reflects Nigeria or only the connected part of it. Mode is recorded on every response and reconciled so nobody is counted twice.
How it is verified
Most survey research verifies a sample of completed interviews. We verify all of them. Every recorded interview is transcribed and checked automatically against the approved questionnaire, the answers logged for that respondent and the disposition the interviewer assigned. Anything that cannot be reconciled goes to a human reviewer, and interviews that fail are excluded with the reason recorded, so exclusions are auditable rather than invisible.
Alongside that run back-checks that re-contact a sample of completed interviews, and screening against the NCC do-not-disturb register before any outbound calling. The full method is published at nigeriapolls.com/methodology, and our capabilities are listed at nigeriapolls.com/capabilities.
Side by side
At a glance
| NigeriaPolls | Stears | |
|---|---|---|
| Type of work | Primary survey research, collected to your question | Financial data platform and research, by subscription |
| Who is asked | Nigerians, by our own interviewers, in all 36 states and the FCT | Not a survey product |
| Collection | Telephone, SMS, WhatsApp, in-person | Not stated as fieldwork |
| Commissioned to your questions | Yes | Not offered publicly |
| Methodology | Published in full | Not published alongside the platform |
| Data licence | CC BY 4.0, commercial reuse permitted | Subscription access |
What it means for you
Existing data, or the answer to your question
Financial data tells you what already happened. How much capital moved, into which sectors, at what valuations, what the macro indicators did. If that is the whole of your question, existing data may already cover it, and we will tell you which part is answered and which part still has to be asked.
Primary research tells you what has not happened yet. Whether Nigerians will buy your product at your price. Which of three messages lands in Kano and dies in Enugu. Whether a community will accept a project before you commit capital to it. How a state will vote. Why churn rose in one region and not another.
No database contains those answers, because nobody has asked the question yet. That is the work we do, and it is the only route to an answer that is about your decision rather than about the market in general.
Most serious buyers need both. They are not substitutes, and nothing here suggests otherwise.
Before you commission
Five questions worth asking any research firm
Ask them of us too. Our answers are published rather than promised.
- Is this primary data, or analysis of data someone else collected? Both are useful. Knowing which you are buying is not optional.
- How many states will actually be in field, and which ones? Zonal representation is not state coverage.
- What is the sample size, and what breakdowns will it support? Ask how many respondents sit behind each cut you intend to report separately.
- Can I read the full methodology before I commit? Sampling frame, weighting, quality controls and limitations should be published, not described on a call.
- How is interview quality verified, and on what share of interviews? A sample is normal. All of them is better.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is Stears?
Stears is a financial data and research platform for investors in African markets, offered by subscription. It provides financial data and research for funds, investors and corporates investing in African markets.
Is Stears a survey research company?
Stears positions itself as a financial data platform rather than a survey research firm. Where a question needs primary fieldwork, meaning someone going out and asking a defined sample of Nigerians directly, that is the work we do. Bring us the question and we will tell you whether it needs new data or whether existing sources already cover it.
What is the difference between financial data and primary research?
Financial data describes what already happened, such as capital flows, prices and macro indicators. Primary research generates new information by asking people directly, which is the only way to answer a question nobody has yet collected data on, such as how a market will respond to a new product, price or candidate.
Which states does NigeriaPolls cover?
All 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Samples are designed to be readable at the level your decision is about, which for political work is usually a state, a senatorial district or a local government area rather than the country as a whole.
How does NigeriaPolls verify interview quality?
Every recorded interview is transcribed and checked automatically against the approved questionnaire, the answers logged for that respondent and the disposition the interviewer assigned. Most research verifies a sample; we verify all of them. Anything that cannot be reconciled goes to a human reviewer, and interviews that fail are excluded with the reason recorded so exclusions are auditable.
Can I reuse NigeriaPolls data commercially?
Published data is released under CC BY 4.0, so you may reuse, adapt and redistribute it commercially with attribution and without negotiating a licence. Data from a commissioned study belongs to the arrangement agreed with that client.
Commission a study
Political, electoral, consumer or social. Tell us the question and the geography and we will come back with a methodology, a timetable and a fixed price.