Relevance & Research Question:
Surveytainment is an often used term when discussing design and layout issues of a questionnaire. At this point of time there is a huge gap between the amount of publications on surveytainment and its actual implementation. Today’s questionnaires oftentimes appear too boring for participants leading to increasing panel drop-out rates throughout the industry and decreasing willingness to participate in the survey: An essential threat to both the market research community and to panel service agencies.
Methods & Data:
A cooperative study between an end client BSH Bosch Siemens Hausgeräte, a research agency, SKOPOS and an access panel provider, ODC Services, engages in how a visually appealing and innovative composition of a questionnaire is able to exploit the potential of surveytainment. What is surveytainment really capable of concerning the effects on the quality of results, the satisfaction of participants, the termination rate and the panel drop-out rate? What are the limitations of surveytainment? To investigate these methodological questions a research topic with rather low involvement was chosen in order to allow for a maximum variance in criteria variables.
By using a split-half-design with samples being structurally identical, the impact of visual layout, the extent and the variability in interactivity and wording on different criteria of data quality will be reviewed and evaluated. Thereby both groups receive a questionnaire being thematically identical that only shows differences in terms of the design and layout and level of interactivity. To identify the effects certain key questions and answer categories will not be varied throughout both groups.
Added Value:
The authors will illustrate practical references when creating a questionnaire and will demonstrate them based on the study results. Furthermore the results will highlight how important the potential - defined by creative elements within a questionnaire – regarding the mentioned parameters is. The research community is in need of precise and practical guidelines to realize, understand and use the potential of surveytainment. On the other hand we will be able to highlight the limitations and restrictions of surveytainment in the day-to-day market research business.