Re-positioning the survey

While ripples from within the industry continue to revolutionise the practice and sex it up with the likes of neuroscience, behavioural data and mobile research, a solid, giant brick wall thwarts these efforts. No, not just the contestants of The Apprentice and their laughable attempts at market research, but the very life-blood of quantitative research: the survey.

The survey can be viewed as the face of our profession. It is what we expose the general public to when we ask for their thoughts. Yet unlike the way we brand our websites to potential clients or the way advertisers aim to engage and encourage action, the survey, on the whole, fails to excite or capture the imagination in any shape or form.

Information presented in a dull way is a big visual turn-off. Yet this is supposed to act as a core component in end client decision-making. This is our product and this is what our clients, the big brands, are presenting to their target customers. As a result, the survey acting as the brand marker of market research is being publicised and represented as boring and therefore being placed in the same cognitive desirable space as a household chore or life admin. Can you therefore blame market research for having the reputation it does?

What hurts even more is when you think about the wider picture: the research industry is churning out these dull, lifeless surveys while the rest of the commercial world is making noises with clever, mentally stimulating visuals that make you smile. It’s quite embarrassing.

We talk about impacting clients’ business and driving innovation, yet our basic tool for eliciting feedback has hardly moved on from looking like a paper questionnaire transposed onto a digital screen. If we really are that innovative, then why do we make the desire to complete our surveys so difficult? These criticisms merely cover the survey’s aesthetic flaws. When we look at the wider detrimental effects of the impact of poor survey design we find response bias and consumer boredom. When we expose individuals to lengthy questionnaires, uninspiring question formats and repetitive, redundant questioning we’re providing a long list of reasons for inducing rapid random clicks, which ultimately generates poor quality data.

Surveys need to be re-positioned and given more thought than they are currently given. They are not a means to an end but should be mentally stimulating, empowering and rewarding for an individual to complete. A few basics to consider:

• Visualisation: infographics can now be found in all disciplines and are a prime example of why information, presented in an easy to digest, attractive way is favourable. Just as the creative industry aims to distract and disrupt in order to attract attention, the survey needs to learn from these lessons and begin to become more imaginative.
• Interactive questions: survey interactivity heightens respondent engagement and concentration on the subject matter. Drag and drop questions or slider questions that replace the rapid clicking mechanism have been proven to get participants thinking about their answers more carefully. Combining these with visuals boosts effort levels further.
• Question wording: surveys that come into my inbox these days too often have a level of formality inherited from the early days of market research conducted by telephone. This lineage is apparent through the often overcomplicated, unnecessarily wordy and uninventive text. One key lesson that has been imparted to me during my career: ‘think like a copy writer.’ At the very least, consider the adoption of natural, everyday occuring language.
• Survey length: really isolate the necessity of every question attribute in your survey. At all costs, reduce the boredom effect, or else your research questions run the risk of being merely background noise in an attempt to reach finish.
• Above all, think like a participant. They are people just like you and I. If you are puzzled and switching off, chances are they are too. Do participants feel they are contributing to something important with what you’re going to present them?

Inevitably looking at the above list we think time, effort and money. But how much do we value data quality for our research projects and what proportion of scripting makes up the total cost of a study? Is this representative? Are you okay with this?

The survey is our vehicle to the outside world. Doing the bare minimum, and thanking people for their opinions only at the end of a gruelling 20-minute survey not only hurts the reputation of research but threatens the future of online research.

Lucy Hoang is senior research executive at Northstar Research Partners.