Do you think like a respondent?

Poor quality survey design leads to low completion rates, high dropout rates, speeding, suspicious behavior, panel attrition and higher sample costs. Ultimately poor design can lead to bad business decisions. Mobile may finally force better survey design and better-written questions. At the March 2016 Cincinnati AMA Marketing Research Shared Interest Group, we not only reviewed best practices, but worst practices…poor layout, awkward wording and long/repetitive questions. In the session, we looked at blinded screen shots from real-world surveys and explored the following questions for each example:

• Would you answer/be able to answer each one?
• What would be your reaction to each one?
• What is bad about each one?
• How would you improve each one?

Think mobile first. Think respondent first.