Do you have time for an hour-long survey with 100 questions? Apparently not, and neither does your target audience.
In today’s fast pacing world, while we are all fighting for water, space, and oxygen on the global level, we are all fighting for time personally. Struck in a phase of time poverty, we all yearn for a couple of extra hours a day. So, considering the fleeting moments and diminishing attention span of humans to 8 seconds – you barely have time to lay hold of a consumer’s attention.
Simply put, getting the length of your survey right is one of the most challenging parts of your research objective. Too long, too boring entails the risk of people losing interest and dropping the survey.
Not only does longer survey affects the quality of your responses but also has a lingering affect on the response rate.
How long should a questionnaire be?
The researchers when struggling with the number of questions for a questionnaire always ends up in a bind. While there is no magic number regarding the length of the questionnaire, it is usually measured by the average time a respondent takes to complete the entire questionnaire.
With decades of intellectual and professional research practice, the researchers have drawn to the idea that the questionnaires, if kept fairly short lead to high-quality responses from all respondents to all questions, while still leaving scope for thorough questioning.
The pertinent factor to be considered here is that the respondent is not solely focused on the survey but is exposed to distractions every minute. From constant alerts on the mobile and phone calls to whistling cooker and disturbing doorbells, the conflict with the respondent’s environment is always looming. In the nick of time, the respondent ends up losing interest and abandoning the survey.
To steer clear from the prospect of survey fatigue, it is only ideal to incorporate 10-15 questions or even fewer. It may happen that in case of longer surveys the respondent might submit the responses promptly and without putting much thought into it, negating the accuracy of the results.
According to a study conducted by GreenBook Research Industry Trends Report, it is stated that the perfect length of the survey varies from 6-10 minutes for 35% of respondents, 18% of respondents prefer spending not more than 5 minutes on the survey and 27.6% indicated they would like to spare 15 minutes of their valuable time.
Source: GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) Report, 2017
Tips to keep your survey short and response rate high
- Making right choice of questions
As a researcher you are presented with a diverse range of questions for designing the questionnaire. Opting for open ended questions or close ended questions, choosing between complex or simple questions, or to go for multiple choice questions or rating questions, the choice of the questions has a crucial bearing on the time taken by the respondent to answer each, affecting the overall length of the questionnaire. It is critical yet significant to pick questions that demands lesser time from the respondent.
- Share the Time of the survey
It is always a safe bet to inform the respondents about the time they would have to invest in the survey. The time mentioned at the start will keep them motivated to continue the survey maintaining the response rate. Having an indicator that informs the respondent about the estimated time left for the completion of the survey turns out to be helpful as it keeps them updated about their progress.
- Choose Relevant Questions
As obvious as it may sound, asking the questions that are just more relevant to your research goals, eliminates the extra time being wasted on the questions, the answers of which are probably known. Additionally, repetition and duplication of questions can lead to survey dropouts and affect the engagement rate. It’s important to avoid questions that implies the same meaning or demand similar responses.
- Communicate to them that their feedback matters
If at the very outset of the survey the respondents are informed as to how important their feedback is and what difference their opinion can make, they would be inspired to complete the survey serving high response rates.
- Contemplate the purpose
A well-curated survey is the one that reflects the defined purpose. While preparing and designing the questions it is important to make sure that the questions that make to the final questionnaire supports the purpose.
- Use of pictorial over text
Remember when as kids we preferred books with more pictures? When it comes to surveys, visual content goes a long way. Respondents might be taking your survey while on driving or cooking or looking after children, so reading extensive text can precarious. In such scenarios, visual content is processed much faster and quicker, prompting the respondents to probably continue answering the questions.
- Your Survey Objectives
Well, have you ever realized that the target audience and the collection of data about different products can have a major impact on the length of your survey?
- Target Audience
Bracketing your target audience is key when it comes to successful surveys. Let’s consider a situation where you have two products. The target audience for product one is college going girls while the target audience for product two are working mothers. Since the working mothers are going to have much lesser time in comparison to the college going girls, for an effective response rate for product two, it is necessary to ensure the survey is short and quick.
- The Data you are hoping to collect
There may be times when the data that needs to be collected requires an in-depth approach. In such case it is important to ensure that the survey is engaging and keeps the audience invested. If the survey is boring, the respondent would be urged to drop out, irrespective the length.
Conclusion
Considering the above tips and discussion might ease your stress with respect to the length of the survey and more, the creation of surveys can still bring up a lot of challenges. Well, if you are looking forward for the safety net, Xcel Online Surveys is one of the most reliable and the go-to platform for creating and designing surveys.
[1] GRIT, GreenBook Research Industry Trends Report, https://www.greenbook.org/mr/grit/