SURVEY DESIGN: MOTIVATION UNDERSTANDING & EASE OF COMPLETION

1. SURVEY DESIGN: MOTIVATION UNDERSTANDING & EASE OF COMPLETION Damon Burton University of Idaho

2. How can we best motivate respondents to complete the survey and provide quality responses?

3. MOTIVATION IN 6 COMPONENTS OF SURVEY • Size of survey, • Sponsor letter, • Informed consent, • General instructions, • Ease of understanding & completion, • Sequencing of survey components.

4. SIZE OF SURVEY • Respondents are motivated to complete surveys that are reasonable in length. • If surveys are short, you should have motivated respondents, even though typically we want to cram in more rather than fewer questions. • If surveys are long, make them seem short. • For mail surveys, size and weight should be minimized (i.e., booklet format is smaller, lighter and seems shorter). • For online surveys, eliminate the progress bar, limit to 10 questions per page to eliminate scrolling, and work from harder to easier questions to reduce fatigue.

5. SPONSOR LETTER • Provide a strong rationale for why study is important. • If possible, tie into interests of the respondent. • Enhance autonomy by reinforcing that they can be part of the decision-making process through their input. • Convince them that responding is safe because they are anonymous or their data is totally confidential. • Provide incentives (i.e., money up front) but other incentives are powerful too. Sometimes an opportunity to get a copy of study results is a powerful incentive.

6. INFORMED CONSENT • Keep Informed Consent to 1 page, including check box. • Cover all rights and safeguards but keep it brief. • IRB has confirmed your protocol, so just tell respondents enough to make them feel secure. • Emphasize how much of a contribution that they are making to the process.

7. GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS • For instruments that focus on respondents’ perceptions, emphasize • No right or wrong answer, • Put down first thing that pops into their head, and • Read questions carefully. • For surveys that contain a wide variety of questions, emphasize • Read questions thoroughly, • Recall as accurately as possible, and • Follow directions carefully.

8. UNDERSTANDING & COMPLETION EASE • For long instruments, put responses beside question. • Format is much faster than responses below. • Easy to get into a good rhythm because responses options remain the same. • Use the 60%/40% rule, with question taking up 60% of width of page and responses 40%. 5

9. UNDERSTANDING & COMPLETION EASE 2. For long surveys, question type should be group to enhance response speed. • Put most important information first and less important questions later on. • Put different types of questions into separate sections. • Evaluate sequencing to enhance flow and speed up response time. 5

10. SEQUENCING OF SECTIONS • Always put demographic information last. • Separate different instruments or components of the survey into unique sections. • Put the most important information first and less information later. • The good stuff will hopefully enhance motivation. • If respondents don’t finish the survey, you may still have useable info to analyze. • If they like the good stuff, it’ll make completing the less interesting more likely.

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