Survey Over-Saturation Effects

Online surveys have not been around for very long, and the software to run these surveys is still being improved even today. Yet despite this relative novelty, potential respondents to online survey research are already suffering from burnout. Response rates for several types of online surveys have decreased, and the problem may be due to over-saturation of survey research.

One of the primary reasons that online surveys have been such a popular way to research is because they are inexpensive to run. You do not need to hire an interviewer, time to completion is much shorter, entering data is much easier and so on. Online surveys are low cost and the software to make them is easy to use.

Unfortunately, that ease has led to billions upon billions of online surveys released for any and all reason. Many of these surveys are nothing more than an attempt to answer a fairly unimportant question, and many more are a way to market a service without much care for the data. There is also the problem of surveys that are used as spam.

Surveys and survey software have become so convenient that they may even be too convenient, and respondents are receiving surveys practically daily. This is causing surveys to over-saturate emails, and potential respondents are becoming less inclined to fill out the surveys. For researchers, this represents a big problem.

Getting a good response rate for your survey is not just about getting a large enough sample – it is also important because when a large number of people don’t fill out your survey it’s possible that all of those people have something in common that may affect the quality of your data.

There’s certainly no harm in running a survey whenever you have a question you need answered. You simply need to make sure that those receiving your survey invite have a reason to want to fill it out. Incentives are a great way to solve this problem.

Give people a good incentive (which most surveys do not offer) and make sure that your survey is sent to those that would actually be interested in filling it out and you are going to get a good response rate. The key is to simply not run your survey at random, hoping for good results. Run a well-planned survey, and you are going to be far more likely to get the response rate you want.