Happy Respondents = More Efficient Fieldwork
While gaining the attention and interest of a survey respondent is a huge challenge today, it is also becoming increasingly difficult to maintain their attention through to the bitter end. With phone surveys, a talented interviewer can stave off hang-ups, but what’s to keep an online (Web-based) respondent from dumping the survey and returning to e-mail or Facebook? Here are some ways to improve respondent experience—for any type of survey—in order to boost your complete rate and meet your sample goals. I discovered these tips in the January 2009 issue of Quirk’s Marketing Research Review.
- Make your survey engaging and convenient. People get bored easily and when they get bored they pay more attention to the time they’re spending on your survey. Improve your content with more images and color. Research has shown that multimedia studies perform better than others. In addition to making the survey questioning and formatting more intriguing, also punch up headlines for invites. Make the link to the survey highly visible and appealing so they simply can’t resist.
- Think simple. Complex questions can be unclear and leave respondents unsure about how to answer. Stick to concise wording along the lines of “laser questioning” (who, what, where, when, and how) that asks for specific information without using extra clauses or explanations. These questions often get better answers.
- Limit questions to less than 50 words. Question length is a major driver for survey satisfaction, which declines significantly above the 50-word mark. They are less complex and look easier to answer. This also means shortening those long lists of answer choices by either reducing the number or shortening the text for each.
- Avoid long lists of rating questions. When respondents see these, their “this-is-too-long-to-deal-with” radar goes off. Research has determined that exhausting rating lists increase the possibility of respondents entering bad answers just to get through the survey. At that point your data integrity goes out the window. To avoid this significant problem, break long lists into smaller parts. For online surveys, make lists continue onto another Web page. If that still doesn’t solve the problem, you could even break the study into two surveys.
- Limit open-ended questions. They take more time, thought, and work to answer. The qualitative information you can gather in an open-ended format is important, but if you can brainstorm answer choices and create a close-ended question, you’ll be better off. Keep in mind as well that open-ended questions are more time-consuming to code and analyze.
- Avoid repetitive questions. While good research studies ask the same (or similar) key questions in several ways, word them in different ways and space them well.
- Provide accurate survey response times. Interestingly, the length of a survey is not a factor for dissatisfaction. Respondents don’t mind taking longer surveys, as long as you tell them the correct time required. People get upset when you violate their expectations. If a survey really takes 13 minutes and you tell them 10, expect your attrition rate to increase. Better to say the longer time so they can make an informed decision to participate.
- Pre-test. This is Market Research 101, but sometimes in our desire to get a study into the field this may go by the wayside. Check for items 1–7 above to make sure your survey is as streamlined, attractive, and accurately timed as possible.
- Get feedback. If your survey isn’t too long already, throw in a “comments and suggestions” question at the end. You might be surprised at the helpful and specific input that’s offered.
Photo by Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha
