Survey Methodology
Incumbent-based survey
Also called: per-incumbent survey, individual-data survey
A survey methodology where employers submit data per employee (per incumbent) rather than per role.
Incumbent-based surveys collect compensation data at the individual-employee level. Each row in the submitted dataset is one employee, with their job, location, tenure, base salary, bonus, equity, etc.
Incumbent data lets the survey vendor compute statistics (medians, percentiles) across thousands of actual employees, which produces much sharper benchmarks than role-level averages. Most major comp surveys (Mercer MBD, Aon Radford, WTW) use incumbent-based methodology.
The tradeoff: incumbent surveys require more participant effort to submit, and the published reports are typically reported at the role level rather than at the individual level (for confidentiality).