Posts Tagged ‘response rates’
Thursday, August 23rd, 2012
Way back in 1944, Edwards Deming published an article in the American Sociological Review that could be required reading for anybody who does research today. He outlined all potential (and unfortunately, common) sources of error in survey research.
Apparently our contemporary obsession with sample sizes, random samples, response rates, and margins of error is not so new. In outlining all sources of error, Demining wanted to emphasize that “sampling errors, even for small samples, are often the least of the errors present.”
So despite some old-fashioned language and defunct technologies (Versta Research has never fielded a survey via telegraph!) we feel it is worth reproducing here what Deming called the thirteen factors “affecting the ultimate usefulness of a survey” as all of them apply as much today as they did 68 years ago:
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Tags: bias, margin of error, Online Surveys, response rates, Sampling, survey, Survey Design
Posted in Data Analysis & Analytics, Data Collection, Market Research, Public Polls, Sampling, Survey Design | Comments Off
Thursday, August 2nd, 2012
Is this YOUR distracted survey respondent?
A couple weeks ago we presented new data showing that response rates continue to decline. You can now expect that a typical, rigorously executed phone survey will yield a response rate in the single digits.
Scientific evidence over the last decade has shown that high response rates do not necessarily yield more accurate surveys. In fact, it turns out that high response rates can actually hurt the accuracy of surveys.
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Tags: Online Surveys, phone surveys, response rates, Sampling, survey, survey respondents
Posted in Data Collection, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Online Surveys, Public Polls | Comments Off
Thursday, July 19th, 2012
Survey response rates are now staggeringly low—in the single digits. A typical response rate for a relatively high-budget, carefully executed phone survey is merely 9%, down from 36% just fifteen years ago. Here are the numbers from research conducted earlier this year by the Pew Center:
Survey Response Rates Continue to Decline
If you want to throw money at a survey and try really hard to boost your response rate (the high-effort survey shown in the chart above), you can likely get up to 20% to 25%. But you will need to:
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Tags: phone surveys, public opinion, Public Polls, response rates, Sampling, survey
Posted in Data Collection, Public Polls, Sampling | Comments Off
Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
How big of a sample size do you really need? A recent article in the New York Times cited the following statistics:
- A small Voice of the Customer (VoC) research company called Mindshare Technologies collects satisfaction data from 175,000 respondents every day. That’s 60 million in a year.
- ForeSee, a small customer experience analytics firm fielded 15 million surveys in 2011.
These numbers are believable. I get a pop-up survey from ForeSee at least two or three times a week.
And it is absurd. Granted, these companies (and hundreds of other similar firms) are collecting surveys for multiple clients. But almost certainly, nobody needs to collect that much survey data from that many survey respondents. Why not? (more…)
Tags: bias, data, Data Collection, data mining, insight, Market Research, response rates, Sampling, satisfaction research, survey respondents, survey technology
Posted in Data Analysis & Analytics, Data Collection, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Sampling | Comments Off
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
One of the surprises of multi-mode research is that offering people a choice of how they want to complete a survey (online, by mail, by phone, etc.) does not necessarily boost response rates. An article in the most recent issue of Public Opinion Quarterly provides new evidence of this. The study showed that even in a population with full access to both mail and Internet options (and full literacy in both modes), a full mail survey achieves a higher response rate than a web-based survey. It also achieves a higher response rate than a choice of either mail or web. So much for our recent article on The Myth of Too Many Choices!
But the study went further to explore some ways of sequentially deploying multiple survey options and multiple modes of information that can substantially boost web-based survey response rates. Here are some key takeaways from the research: (more…)
Tags: Data Collection, Internet, Online Surveys, response rates, survey, survey respondents
Posted in Data Collection, Online Surveys, Survey Tips | Comments Off
Friday, December 3rd, 2010
Surveys matter only if people are willing to fill them out – and getting people to fill them out is not an easy task. There are many interesting distractions in the world! And there many silly surveys and junk surveys competing for people’s attention. When the time comes that you need important feedback via a survey, getting a sufficient response rate can be challenging.
Though relatively low response rates can yield statistically sound data (see our article, Do Response Rates Really Matter?) you need to have some data to work with. One organization we recently advised found itself with just two respondents for a do-it-yourself survey they launched, and unfortunately they lost the opportunity to go back into the field for another shot.
Based on our experience and what we have learned from the ever-evolving scientific literature on survey methods, here are three important steps you can take to improve your survey response rates: (more…)
Tags: Data Collection, response rates, survey, survey respondents
Posted in Data Collection, Market Research, Survey Tips | Comments Off