Selling Survey Questions Risks

In a previous article, we discussed the idea of selling survey questions to other companies in order to reduce the cost of running a survey. Surveys tend to cost a set amount, regardless of length, and so adding questions for another company in exchange for shouldering some of the costs of your survey may be an option you can consider in order to reduce the financial burden your company bears.

But while this is an interesting way of reducing costs, it is by no means a perfect way. There are some possible downsides to selling off questions. Some of these weaknesses include: Survey Response Problems Any time you add questions to a survey, you risk altering your results.

Survey response burnout is a serious problem, with each new question increasing the likelihood that your respondents will quit the survey before they finish. It’s also possible that questions can alter the results unintentionally, in ways that aren’t always understandable. Adding questions you don’t need can change the results of a survey in ways that are hard to understand.

Customer Opinion If the questions you add don’t show that you’re dedicated to customer service, you may lose some credibility in the eyes of the customer. Customers want to see that they are taking a satisfaction survey because you care about their satisfaction. Commitment to the Partner Trends are such an important part of research, that once you’ve run the survey once with the questions added, you may need to run them again and again.

If you decide you don’t need the partner anymore or the partner isn’t willing to partner again, you may not be able to complete the research using the same survey and seeing what the changes in trends are.

There may still be ways for you to use the data and handle research with partner companies. Perhaps you can add the questions to the end of the survey and hopefully receive all of the data beforehand. Maybe you can add one or two leading questions that are used as advertising for a company, rather than as research itself.

At the very least, when the choice is between running a survey with a partner and not running a survey at all, the partner may be a good idea. But there are clearly downsides to working with a partner, and when it comes to research, you want to do whatever it takes to avoid these weaknesses. Ideally, you should avoid survey research partners, but if you must have one they are certainly something to consider.