Multiple Questions Per Page

It is well known that the longer the survey, the fewer respondents will complete it. While the type of survey effects the length a survey can be before it experiences a huge drop off rate, many researchers have found that when a survey is longer than 10 to 15 questions, it should be expected that your response rate will drop considerably. It has also been found that respondents hate scrolling.

You never want to have 100 questions on a single page causing people to have to scroll down to read the next question. Every question they have to answer should be directly in their view, so that they can click the “next page” button and move on without scrolling down.

Knowing these facts, some researchers have overcompensated. They have placed a single question on each page of the survey. Once the respondent answers the question, they click “next” and move on to the next question.

While this may sound like a good idea, the truth is that this introduces the exact same problems that researchers are trying to avoid: Time – Answering the question and clicking a button to move on to the next question takes a great deal of time. That time is then added to the survey, so 10 questions becomes a longer survey than if 3 or 4 questions had been listed on a single page. Appearance of Length – Every time your sample clicks “next” they are closer to expecting the survey to be over (regardless of the length of the status bar).

The more times they have to click “next” the longer the survey is going to feel. Moving the Eyes – Respondents also have to take their eyes off the survey every time they need to move their mouse to the “next” button. The reason that scrolling is an inconvenience is because they need to consistently move their mouse to answer the next question.

Clicking “next” after every question introduces the same problem. While it is important to keep all of your questions on a single page and you certainly want every survey question to get the attention it deserves, you introduce more problems than you solve by shortening each page to one question. Try to fit as many questions on a single page as possible to help the survey seem much shorter and allow the survey to take less time for the respondent.