Boring Questions Hurt Data Quality

Market research and customer satisfaction are dependent on the idea that the data you receive is indicative of the thoughts and feelings of the larger population. We know that there are methods of collecting data that can affect that indication.

For example, if your survey is too long, dropout may be high or customers may answer questions too quickly to provide you with any real value. There are countless examples of issues that could affect the reliability of your data. One such issue may be boring questions.

If your questionnaire is incredibly boring and/or about boring topics, customers may have no interest in providing a thoughtful answer. Shorter questionnaires are one possible solution for this, but they don't completely solve the problem. That's why some experts have taken it to the extreme, and believe that market research should never be about boring topics or use boring questions.

For companies to adopt this strategy, they would essentially have to make business decisions about boring topics without public approval. Not every topic in the business world is going to be interesting to consumers, so any time a decision needs to be made about a boring topic, it would have to be left in the hands of employees/management. From our end, this seems very risky.

After all, your customers should always be your first priority, and making any decision that affects them without first consulting them seems like a bad idea. On the other hand, we see how this makes sense. First, if you don’t expect your data to be accurate because customers will be too bored to give each answer much thought, then performing any type of data collection is pointless.

Second, it is conceivably possible to over-research, and chances are that the topics that are the most boring are also the ones that have an obvious answer, or both decisions are "fine." If either the case, then leaving them out of your research and focusing only on the issues that matter makes the most sense.

There is no real right or wrong answer. Don't forget that you have the option of inserting boring questions into shorter, more exciting surveys, and you can always run smaller studies to support boring decisions while saving the larger studies for the more exciting surveys. But really, it largely depends on your company's own preferences and how you're going to work with the data. Either way, our company's platform will always be available.