SURVEYLENGTH.COM

Why use SurveyLength?

The length of a survey, or "questionnaire length" or "length of interview" (LOI), is the time it takes a respondent to complete a research experience (survey), from the time the respondent first starts the experience to when they finish the experience.

SurveyLength allows you to precisely estimate the length of your survey very early in the conception of your study. You don?t need to program your questionnaire, invite respondents, and wait for the first completely answered questionnaires to finally get a first indication of the total time respondents need to answer it. With SurveyLength , you can already estimate the length of your questionnaire as soon as you have a first version of it. This means you won?t have to adapt your questionnaire, delete questions, and test it again until you reach the desired length.

How does it work?

SurveyLength uses both typical answering times for different types of survey questions and takes into account several criteria to provide you with an extremely reliable estimate of the length of your online survey.

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 is 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, consequently, of the entire study.

Third reason: data quality

The longer a questionnaire is, the poorer the quality of the collected data, 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 analyze the questions is obviously proportional to the number of questions asked. In addition, if respondents receive financial compensation, this amount is generally based on the average or median length of the survey.

What is the optimal survey length?

Although there are a large number of studies about the ideal length of an online questionnaire, it is difficult to generalize since a large number of parameters must be taken into account: what is the respondents' personal interest in the subject of the study, do they get an incentive, how old are they...

However, one thing is certain: the longer the questionnaire is, the more questionable the quality of the data collected.

What is the optimal number of questions for an online survey?

It is very difficult to answer this question because not only the time required to answer a question varies according to the respondents, but also according to the type of questions, and there are a large number of types of questions that require a different response time. Therefore, it is not the number of questions that determines the total duration of a questionnaire, but the number and type of questions, plus... a whole series of other criteria.