Asking people to fill out long, tiresome, and boring surveys is a scourge of the research, polling, and survey industry. (Another is asking them to fill out a survey every time they interact with you — see There Are Too Many Surveys.) Asking people to fill out long surveys teaches them to avoid surveys in…
Nearly every survey begins with screening questions to ensure that only the people you are trying to reach are included in the survey. For example, if you are conducting a survey of women, you need to ask about gender and kick out the men. And because every question costs money, you want to qualify respondents…
For some reason I’m always a little surprised that people tell the truth on surveys. I like to think of my “healthy skepticism” as a professional asset, because it forces us to check and double check, corroborate and triangulate. Before we commit to the findings of a research effort, we need to feel 100% sure…
Market researchers complain a lot when they get data back from surveys and see that people have been “speeding” through their surveys or that people are not giving thoughtful responses. Putting aside the issue of fraud (which is a huge problem in our industry) the problem is rarely “bad respondents” – instead the problem is…
Satisfice is not a word you will find in most dictionaries, but it is a word you will hear often in the world of survey research. Satisficing is what survey respondents do when they “sort of” want to answer survey questions but not really. They are like lazy students taking a test. They dislike too…
Here are four types of “attention checks” to build into your questionnaires and analysis in order to assess whether respondents are fully engaged in answering your survey.
A recent study shows that team translation is superior for accurate survey translation, but that less accurate translations will work just as well in terms of survey measurement.
Cell phone dialing is now essential for phone surveys, just as mobile-optimized surveys are essential for online surveys. A lot of market research continues to ignore this.
It’s not easy to use a survey to measure public knowledge or misperceptions. Why? Because surveys are not quizzes. Respondents expect you to ask questions they can answer truthfully and correctly based on their opinions and experience. As good researchers, we mostly try to reassure respondents: “There are no right or wrong answers! Please give…
An endearing trait of survey respondents is that most are sincerely interested in helping you. They want to offer authentic opinions. They want to provide you with good data. I was reminded of this when reading findings from a study about survey “cheating” in a recent issue of Public Opinion Quarterly. The researchers (at the…