Lightspeed warns over wording of online survey invitations
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Including the survey topic within an online invitation can increase the number of false responses, recent work from WPP-owned agency Lightspeed Research has revealed.
David Day, European CEO for Lightspeed Research, said: “Targeted invitations that provide subject matter and incentives for qualifying could cause respondents to take a survey just to receive the incentive, even if they know they do not qualify, which clearly could invalidate the entire research undertaken.”
The study took a sample and divided it into two groups, demographically matched by age and gender.
A non-targeted invite was sent to one group, explaining respondents would win 10 entries for a monthly prize draw if they completed the questionnaire but it had no mention of the subject matter.
The second group was sent a targeted invite, clearly indicating the study was looking for people who went fishing at least once a month and would receive a three Euro gift voucher if they qualified and completed the survey.
In both groups, those that met the qualifying criteria were then asked four questions concerning 25 fishing rod brands – 10 of which did not exist.
Among the targeted invite group, 21% claimed to be aware of non-existent brands compared to 9 % in the non-targeted group.
A similar result was shown when respondents were asked to list the brands they actually used – with 14 % of the targeted invite group claiming to use non-existent brands, versus 5 % in the other group.
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