crossman

Pete Cape
Survey Sampling International
Member

Questionnaire Length - it's too long....

Article here about questionnaire length which is a mash up of our (SSI) white paper and MarketTools' on the same subject

http://www.research-live.com/news/news-headlines/respondent-engagement-and-survey-length-the-long-and-the-short-of-it/4002430.article

Now I don't disagree that it would be possible through good design to keep engagement and motivation going for longer. John Bremer (Harris Interactrive) told me @ ARF he had done similar in the past.

my question is: would we want to? should we make a stand at 20 minutes?

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Comments

regbaker
Reg Baker

These two approaches do their best to define a set of measurable criteria that seem to drive engagement. But I expect the authors would agree that there are other variables missing from the equation, specifically content and question wording. It is sort of the nature of the MR beast that we do lots of surveys on pretty boring topics. And the art of question writing and questionnaire design is practiced somewhat unevenly, to say the least. These things are very difficult to measure. I might agree with John Bremer if his point is that clear and easily understood questions on a salient topic can keep people engaged for more than 20 minutes. But based on my experience, that's a high bar given current practice in the industry. A long-winded way of saying that a simple rule like 20 minutes may be the best course. To this I would add that research like this moves the ball forward in an important way by getting us beyond talk of slider bars, engaging colors and cute answering gadgets. Surveys are too long and boring. Now that we have more or less agreed about the long part, let's focus on boring.

Twinduct404
Charl Du Plessis

I can't agree more Reg. No matter the wrapping paper we use, research forces questionnaires to end up boring. I think if we take recent developments in general, we might be able to start running assumptions on what to change.

Standard questions in an online survey is created so that we can adapt paper questionnaires, however with these questions we completely ignore the strength of the platform. So we as a whole decide that we can't change the content of the questions or the data the client expects to receive, so we mask it with more interactive forms. As reg stated earlier, that makes it pretty, still not better.

I believe that unless we change the market expectations/ perception of a panel and its software surrounding it, we will keep on waddling around, looking like the half brother of telephonic research .. the brother that only seems to be important once quotas needs fillin.

megaraz
Alexer Zakolov

Президент посмотрел на часы на стене Девять часов

megaraz
Alexer Zakolov

Ближе всего к эпицентру была расположена станция Национального центра по изучению землетрясений на территории Колорадской школы горных инженеров в городке Голден Стрелки сейсмографов начали внезапно танцевать по лентам самописцев, что заставило геофизика Клейтона Морзе обратить внимание на сотрясения почвы, когда он уже собирался окончить дежурство и поехать домой

megaraz
Alexer Zakolov

- Они просто играли роль приманки, отвлекающей внимание от группы, получившей задание разрушить центр управления Каматори с трудом поверил, что ему так сказочно повезло