Keeping Respondents Engaged Online

Can Richard Nixon, cottage cheese, and ketchup help ensure the integrity of your survey data? We think so. Data integrity is one of the most important issues facing marketing research today.  Corporations rely on the integrity of the data collected in their marketing research studies to make important business decisions that directly affect their sales.  One of the most important factors in ensuring the integrity of survey data is respondent engagement.

• Graphics: Adding colorful pictures and graphics to questions helps to keep respondents’ minds stimulated and keeps them interested.

• Color coding rating scales: Color coded rating scales (e.g. red=negative and green=positive) make questions more intuitive for respondents.

• Multiple questions per screen: Grouping like questions can reduce screen re-fresh times and helps respondents feel like they are answering fewer questions.

• Use a more efficient methodology: One example of a more efficient methodology would be to use a maximum difference exercise in place of traditional rating scales, lengthy ranking exercises or a series of paired comparisons. 

• Use intervening tasks: Sometimes we can’t avoid subjecting respondents to a long series of similar questions.  This is where Nixon, cottage cheese, and ketchup come in (a recent study included an intervening task that asked:  “What did President Nixon like to put ketchup on?”).  Believe it or not, silly trivia questions like these really help keep respondents going during repetitive tasks.

• Create realistic context in an interactive virtual environment:  When interacting with a shopping environment, a respondent’s shopper instincts kick-in causing them to behave very similarly to the way they do in a real environment. This not only keeps them engaged, but elicits results that reflect actual behavior more closely than any online research platform in use today.

The results of not keeping respondents engaged in your online surveys can be catastrophic, causing high mid-interview drop out rates, response bias, panel stress, and questionable data.  Although survey length is an important factor in keeping respondents engaged, it isn’t the most important factor.  Creative survey modifications like these can cut interview length, decrease mid-interview drop outs, and ensure the quality of your data.

Shopping context starts with channel. See how SimuShop can replicate different retail environments >>>