Category Archives: Online Surveys

3 Uses for Question Randomizers Part 2

SurveyMethods.com Survey Software Blog

Question randomizers may not be ideal for every type of survey or every research study, but for those that can use them they have a great deal of potential to help you improve your survey data and account for some of the issues that often lead to incorrect or bias survey results. Read more…

How to Write a Report From Survey Data Part 2

SurveyMethods.com Survey Software Blog

Most companies, especially, take the results section of these reports as an opportunity to try to make the company sound stronger, regardless of what the data says. But it’s better if you don’t fall in that trap, because good research and analysis begets more good research and analysis, and only if you’re sharing meaningful results can you rightfully expect the follow up to make sense to the general public. Read more…

Ethnography and Product Development Part 2

SurveyMethods.com Survey Software Blog

Ethnographic research is a useful tool for product development, and while it’s difficult for many companies to do, it’s something that well financed companies should at least consider. Once you’ve performed ethnographic research, you’ll be able to easily explore what you’ve found further, and possibly come up with innovative or otherwise interesting ideas for targeting the marketplace and meeting the needs of the consumer. Read more…

How Valuable Are Shorter Introductions?

SurveyMethods.com Survey Software Blog

Part of survey research best practices is the idea of creating a survey that a respondent can open and complete as quickly as possible, with as little impact on their life as the researcher can manage. This is primarily because very few people are happy to fill out surveys. Most do it either for the incentive or out of boredom, and a survey that looks too complex or long is likely to cause major survey dropout. Read more…

7 Ways of Improving Your Response Rates

SurveyMethods.com Survey Software Blog

While random sampling is an important part of running a successful survey, your random sample is only as good as your response rate. A random sample of 1,000,000 people is not a large enough sample if only 15 or so respond. Similarly, a complete sample is much less valuable when you have a very low response rate, because there is a high likelihood of similar characteristics with the group that failed to respond, indicating a problem that could present with your analysis. Read more…

Weaknesses of Eye Tracking as a Market Research Technique Part 2

SurveyMethods.com Survey Software Blog

Eye tracking does, unfortunately, have a number of weaknesses. But what you should conclude from these weaknesses is that eye tracking is not valuable alone. As a complementary piece to traditional and better forms of data collection, eye tracking can be extremely useful. It certainly provides information that cannot be gleamed from other sources. Still, it needs to be viewed as just a small part of a much larger puzzle, as if you depend on it too much and ignore other data sources, you’re going to miss a lot of information. Read more…

Weaknesses of Eye Tracking as a Market Research Technique Part 1

SurveyMethods.com Survey Software Blog

In a previous article we looked at the benefits of eye tracking as a market research technique. With 100% accuracy, the ability to follow up to changes with ease, and the potential to get a great deal of information that can’t be gleamed on its own, eye tracking is certainly a beneficial tool for researchers. But like all techniques, eye tracking has its weaknesses. Read more…

Introduction to Gamification Part 3

SurveyMethods.com Survey Software Blog

Respondents that want to feel they’re more special will continue to ask questions until they’re at the very least in the top 10%, and that makes it possible to get more answers out of a longer survey. You may not even need to change the length of the survey or use real numbers. You can simply claim that X amount of participants reached a point until the individual reaches the end of the survey, in which case you can tell them that only 10% or 5% managed to reach the end and they should consider themselves in a special group, even if no such number exists. You can also use real numbers for larger surveys, if you choose to go that route. Read more…

Introduction to Gamification Part 2

SurveyMethods.com Survey Software Blog

While gamification is a useful idea for surveys, many surveys already include various tools or features that make it like a game as is. Incentives, for example, are a natural way of gamifying surveys. With incentives, you have a completion goal – a prize that the user gets at the end of the survey for their willingness to complete it. Some companies also use points as their incentive, and the user is expected to rack up enough points to purchase something fun/valuable, while others “enter for a chance to win,” which has a gaming feel in its own right. Read more…

Introduction to Gamification Part 1

SurveyMethods.com Survey Software Blog

Recently there has been a push to “gamify” surveys. While some have proposed quite literally turning a survey into a game, this approach isn’t that valuable because the cost of development and the likelihood that the game will work properly or feel like a game is fairly low. But there are other ways to gamify surveys – ways that don’t involve much programming while still encouraging more interaction. Read more…