Why does the length of my survey matter ?
The total time required to
complete an online questionnaire is a critical factor in the success of
a survey, here are some of the main reasons for this:
First reason: participation rate
Today, the number of requests to
participate in online surveys increasing. Many companies are using this
form of research to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty. As a
result, fewer people are willing to take time to participate in a
survey, especially if it is long. A survey with an advertised length of
5 minutes is therefore more likely to have a higher participation rate
than a survey with an advertised length of 20 minutes.
Second reason: drop-off rate
The longer a questionnaire is,
the higher the rate of respondents who will stop before answering the
last question in the survey. Unfortunately, it is often
impossible to know if respondents who reach the last question are
different from those who stop during the questionnaire. Therefore, a
high drop-out rate can seriously challenge the representativeness of
the results obtained and therefore of the entire study.
Third reason: data quality
The
longer a questionnaire is, the poorer the quality of the data
collected, especially for the questions at the end of the
questionnaire. The reason is simple, when a questionnaire starts to
bore them, respondents typically speed up: they answer more and more
quickly and take less time to think about the best answer.
Fourth
reason: costs
The longer a survey is, the
higher its cost because the time required to prepare the questionnaire
and analyse the questions is obviously proportional to the number of
questions asked. In addition, if respondents receive a financial
compensation, this one is generally based on the average or median
length of the survey.
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