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A great survey does more than collect valuable insights. But how do we keep people engaged?
Written by
Mel Escott
A great survey does more than collect valuable insights, it provides survey participants with a survey experience that captures their attention and guides their thinking.
We know that maintaining participant engagement leads to better quality data and makes for happier participants, but how do we keep people engaged?
Try our three tips for creating an engaging survey.
People are much more engaged in activities that interest and impact them specifically. You want to capture your audience from the beginning and convince them why completing this survey is important. To achieve this, briefly outline what the survey will involve and the direction it will take. This details, at a high level, the narrative. Good design is empathetic.
For example, consider a survey that collects insights into farmers’ perspectives on environmental regulation. By outlining that you understand their challenges and want to hear directly from them on how they think we can collectively achieve the same environmental outcomes, you give them a purpose to complete the survey through a shared narrative.
A two-way conversation will engage your audience’s curiosity and maintain their attention, keeping them interested until the end of the survey.
By a two-way conversation we mean the survey gives them something back after they have answered a question. This can be in the form of letting survey participants know what they thought compared to others, or tailor their next question based on their previous response. This creates a captivated and interested audience which will help them stick in there for the remainder of the survey.
Beyond this, presenting live feedback also becomes a tool to inform an audience’s perspective. For example, you might:
A common trade-off survey designers face is between open-ended questions and multiple choice.
Open-ended questions become common drop-out points as respondents find it takes time and effort.
Meanwhile, multiple-choice questions are faster to answer, but run the risk of not capturing the range of possible ideas or feelings that a participant might offer. Instead, consider using a combination of question types to precisely capture the respondent’s perspective.
For example, consider a survey where the objective is to capture a list of the barriers for women working in construction. You could design a three-part survey question that would:
We (Scarlatti) are a research and analytics consultancy and have developed a flexible survey tool called Confer, meaning ‘to have a conversation’. Confer has enhanced our ability to collect accurate and insightful information in interesting and engaging ways including feeding back to survey participants how others have answered.
Try these three tips and you will be well on your way to creating a survey that engages your audience, increases completions, and improves the quality of your responses.