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Survey response rates

L

I've developed a survey for my research and I did a pilot on it. So the survey was revised in the light of this. I've had a survey open for a month. I advertised in various professional groups as it relates to particular kinds of roles /functions in the public sector. I've found that the completion rate is about 1 in 5 of those who have looked at /started it. This seems very low to me and I'm feeling rather despondent about it. Any advice or thoughts?

R

Hi, I'm not an expert by any means, but here are some reasons I might start a survey, then stop:

1) If it isn't clear who the survey is for (sometimes I feel the survey might be for market research as opposed to academic research).

2) If I am not the correct audience (sometimes I start a survey and then realise it only applied to males under 18, and this wasn't clear at first).

3) If it is too long! This might be a particular problem if people are completing the survey whilst at work.

Anyone else got any thoughts?

A

I agree with Reenie and will add:

I often quit surveys if it asks me irrelevant questions. So if a survey about iphone apps asks me my gender and marital status I will immediately quit. Equally, if a survey assumes information about me based on gender, age etc I will quit.

If gender is relevant, but I am given only a male/female option I will quit. The same if I'm asked my marital status and there is not a 'other' or 'no answer' box.

If a survey is poorly worded, difficult to understand, contains spelling and grammatical errors I will quit.

Finally, if a survey says "This will take 15 minutes" and 16 minutes in I have still not finished I will quit.

That's not to say that your survey has these issues, but just stating reasons why I quit surveys without finishing them.

C

I agree with Reenie's points above. I haven't seen your survey, LBaines, so these are just general comments, but the main reasons I wouldn't complete a survey are that it turns out to be much longer than I expected (some people ask for 'a couple of minutes' and it turns out to be about 50 involved questions!), if I didn't qualify, or if something about the questions bothered me. This could include unexpectedly intrusive questions or questions that didn't seem fair or balanced.

C

Just on a light note, I quit a survey this morning in which the options for 'marital status' were given as 'single, married or deceased'!!

A

Eeek! Maybe a translation error?!

T

I don't see the issue with asking personal status questions in surveys.. it's anonymous so who cares? Also, isn't it informative for the researcher?

L

Thanks for all your comments and suggestions.

F

questions about race, ethnicity, and religion might cause people to stop a survey as well.

A

Treeoflife - good for you, that's also a valid perspective, it's just different to mine :-)

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