Versta Research Blog » verbatims http://www.verstaresearch.com/blog Versta Research is a full service research firm specializing in customized market research and public opinion polling. Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:18:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Three Ways to Improve Online Verbatim Data http://www.verstaresearch.com/blog/three-ways-to-improve-online-verbatim-data/ http://www.verstaresearch.com/blog/three-ways-to-improve-online-verbatim-data/#comments Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:38:44 +0000 Joe Hopper http://www.verstaresearch.com/blog/?p=48 Good open-ended questions and thoughtful responses to these questions can yield amazingly rich and insightful data.  But given the generally poor quality of responses to open-ended question in mail surveys, some have speculated that open-ended questions in online surveys would suffer a similar fate.

Research seems to show this is not the case.  Further, a study just published in the Summer 2009 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly outlines three ways that we can improve the quality of responses in on-line surveys:

  • Make the boxes in which respondents type their answers larger
  • Explain to respondents that their answers can exceed the size of the box
  • Tell respondents how valuable their input is, and encourage thoughtful answers to each open-ended question

These simple techniques will encourage respondents to give more complete, detailed, and thoughtful answers to our questions, yielding rich and insightful data.

–Joe Hopper, Ph.D.

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