When to Skip Demographics in Surveys

Demographics are often an important part of customer research. In both customer satisfaction and market research, it’s always a good idea to know where you stand with regard to various groups, whether it is age, race, gender, etc.

But although this data can be extremely valuable, it may not be useful in all scenarios. Remember that surveys should only include the minimum amount of information you need to collect, because the longer the survey, the less likely people complete it. Here are some examples of times that you may want to avoid demographic information.

Single Demographic When your primary customer base is already a specific demographic, it’s possible that you are not going to benefit from researching the demographic further. For example, if you manufacture a product that is designed for women between the ages of 18 and 24, and your market the product in a less diverse area, it’s possible that there isn’t much information for you to gain from demographic research. Long Surveys When your survey is already very long, you may need to cut down on questions.

While you can learn a lot from demographic information, it’s possible that you need the answers to your other questions much more, and when that occurs you may want to cut the demographics questions in order to save space, and stick to the questions that are most important. Small Sample Demographic information is incredibly useful, but it is much less useful when your sample is smaller. Minor differences in the results between demographics groups are meaningless, and even though you may find that there are indications within the data, it is actually against your company’s interests to make decisions based on such a small amount of data anyway, so it is best to avoid it altogether.

When it comes to the surveys and the data that you collect, it is important that you only collect information on what you need, when it makes sense for you to collect it. When the survey is too long already or the sample is too small to get any meaningful information – or you believe that the demographics are going to be so similar as to be essentially useless – you should leave demographic questions off of your survey. They won’t bring you enough value, and as such should not be a part of your research.