5 Thoughts on Adding Video to Your Survey

These days, it seems as though most companies are under the impression that all new technology is good technology. Many companies have adopted social media, for example, despite some researchers finding that social media has very limited benefits for most types of companies – all because it was the new “in” thing to do. You see the same thing with web design, where companies try to integrate all kinds of costly and fancy features in their websites without any evidence that adding these features will help them generate enough business to justify the costs. You also see it with surveys, where companies are starting to integrate all types of new technology into their research.

One example is with video. There are ways to integrate video into many web surveys, and because that feature seems “cool” to most researchers, many are quick to jump on the video-in-survey bandwagon.

But is it always a good idea for your business? Consider all of the following: Time Watching a video takes time, and time is the enemy of getting a good response rate. The respondent will have to listen to the entirety of the video before they can answer a question, and if they miss something in the video they’ll have to replay the whole thing from the beginning in order to answer it again.

Sound For videos to be effective, they need to use sound. But some people take their surveys in public places or at night on the computer, and not all have the ability to turn the speakers up or plug in some headphones to listen to what the survey is saying. Work It’s a goal of every researcher to minimize work, and when video is added to the screen, the user has to either click around more than previously, or they have to scroll down, or they’ll only have one question on the page so they’ll have to click “next page” more often.

Either way, videos create more work. Human Face It’s usually a good idea to avoid adding too much personality to your research, for the same reason that a waiter always gets “great” when he/she asks how your food is at a restaurant. It doesn’t matter if the food is any good, people don’t like to give negative responses to a person.

Videos can potentially add to those problems. Language Limits Finally, unless you are producing a new video for every language the person may speak, any survey that has multiple languages is going to be limited by video. You would have to produce a new video for every language you’re addressing.

Does video have its place in surveys? Sure – depending on the type of research, sample, etc., there is easily a good reason or two to integrate video. But you need to truly have that reason. Adding video because the technology is available is likely to do more harm than good to your research.