{"id":19,"date":"2011-08-11T15:05:16","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T15:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/wordpress-camp\/ir-sandbox\/?p=19"},"modified":"2023-09-13T15:41:16","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T15:41:16","slug":"survey-length-and-response-rate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/?p=19","title":{"rendered":"Survey length and response rate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We are often asked what can be done to bolster response rates to surveys.\u00a0\u00a0 There are a lot of ways to encourage responding, but one concern that is often dismissed by those conducting surveys is the length of the survey.\u00a0 But people are busy, and with the many things in life demanding our attention, a long survey can be particularly burdensome if not downright disrespectful.<\/p>\n<p>Below is a plot of the number of items on recent departmental surveys and their response rates.\u00a0 The line depicts the relationship between length of survey and responding (the regression line, for our statistically-inclined friends).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/responserate1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-23\" title=\"Length of Survey and Response Rates\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/responserate1.jpg\" alt=\"Scatterplot of survey length (number of items) and percent responding shows an inverse relationship.  The longer the survey, the fewer responses.\" width=\"912\" height=\"662\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/responserate1.jpg 912w, https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/responserate1-300x217.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 912px) 100vw, 912px\" \/><\/a>Aside from shock that someone actually asked a hundred questions, what you should notice is that as the number of items goes up, responding goes down.\u00a0 This is a simple relationship, determined from just a small number of surveys.\u00a0 Even if I remove the two longest surveys, a similar pattern holds. \u00a0 Of all the things that could affect responding (appearance of the survey, affiliation with the requester, perceived value, timing, types of questions, and many, many other things), that this single feature can explain a\u00a0 chunk of the response rate is pretty compelling!<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;feel&#8221; of length can be softened by layout &#8211; items with similar response options can be presented in a matrix format, for example.\u00a0 But the bottom line is that we must respect our respondents&#8217; time, and only ask them questions that will be of real value and that we can&#8217;t learn in other ways.<\/p>\n<p>Moral:\u00a0 Keep it as short as possible!<\/p>\n<p><em>(For more information about conducting surveys, see the &#8220;<a title=\"Survey Resources\" href=\"http:\/\/www.swarthmore.edu\/x15579.xml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Survey Resources<\/a>&#8221; section of our website.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are often asked what can be done to bolster response rates to surveys.\u00a0\u00a0 There are a lot of ways to encourage responding, but one concern that is often dismissed by those conducting surveys is the length of the survey.\u00a0 But people are busy, and with the many things in life demanding our attention, a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/?p=19\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Survey length and response rate<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1587,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/1587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}