Your survey respondents want to tell you something: you’re being a bit rude.
Those surveys with pages and pages of questions? The ones where you can’t progress until you’ve completed an open-ended response? Those surveys are hard for your respondents to take, in more ways than one.
Look, not everyone is guilty of the above, and you might not be.
But even if you’re not, you can see how it’s easy to forget that your respondents aren’t merely numbers on a bar chart or email addresses to send to.
It’s easy to forget that they’re real people.
We’ve got to start talking to them that way. But first let’s take a look at some of the most irritating – and easily avoidable – ways in which people are inconsiderate to their respondents.
The top 3 worst offences
- Surveys with an awkward flow. Just like in a conversation, abrupt subject changes or awkward leaps from topic to topic in your survey are confusing and disruptive.
- Surveys with too many interruptions. A few interruptions (such as page breaks) can be a good thing in a conversation. It can break topics down into manageable chunks that are easy to understand. But too many are distracting.
- Surveys that demand too much. You can’t expect to go on and on and expect people to care.
Why does it matter to you?
Aside from common courtesy, we still haven’t talked much about why it’s a good idea to treat your survey respondents well. After all, you don’t know these people and you’ll probably never ask for their responses again.
That might be true, but you should still care because the experience that they have can alter your data, and significantly too. How?
Dropouts: If your surveys are too frustrating to complete, your respondents will abandon them. Some dropouts in a survey are common and natural, but too many can be a problem. Losing too many respondents might mean that you won’t be able achieve a viable sample size, or it could damage your data as a result of non-response bias. That’s when the people who respond are different from the ones who don’t, and it means you’re getting incomplete data.
Satisficers: Even if people complete a bad survey, that doesn’t mean they were paying attention. Some respondents simply don’t put much effort into taking surveys, whether they’re answering without fully considering the options or simply skimming the questions. Frustrating surveys will cause more of your respondents to act like satisficers. The data that you obtain from these respondents can actually be worse than getting too few responses; you won’t even know if your data is good or bad.
Do you want our advice?
It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, it’s fairly easy to keep your respondents happy.
- Put yourself in your respondents’ shoes. Is this a survey that you would want to take yourself? If not, you’re probably asking too much.
- Start treating your surveys like conversations, because that’s the best way to make sure you’re being courteous.
- Download our guide for treating your respondents like human beings by using three simple conversation techniques.
Connect with your respondents
Download our guide for tips and tricks – backed up by data – on how to obtain better responses from the people who are taking your surveys.
