The development of new techniques of quantitative social research, which is performing in the world, is particularly associated with an increase in popularity of online access panels. Internet access panels enable rapid implementation of different types of interdisciplinary research on an unprecedented scale, but they also generate new problems and challenges, which are necessary to overcome by panels managers, researchers and methodologists. The challenges include the need to: clarify, reformulate or complete many definitions; adopt appropriate standards of research, develop comparable with each other, precisely and formally defined indicators of panels’ quality, etc. A good starting point for such considerations is the ISO 26362:2009 standard and ESOMAR guidelines concerning the use and functioning of the access panels. These documents, however, do not solve many problems and further refining and updating them is a necessity. Particularly relevant issues worth considering are the challenges associated with the response rate and the representativeness of studies, carried out in online access panels. The key challenge in the development of this type of research is also to ensure the panelists / on-line respondents willing to participate in social research. Experiences from a variety of access panels show that their research capacities continue to grow and can be used more intensively also in Poland – both in the near and distant future.