NEWS5 March 2014

Decipher rewards keeping it short

News North America

US — Decipher has announced that it is offering discounted pricing for clients fielding short, mobile-compatible surveys.

The new model, for users of the company’s research and reporting platform, Beacon, will see hosting fees lowered by 25% for surveys that contain 15 questions or fewer and are mobile-compatible.

“We’ve been a consistent voice in the industry about the need to change survey design for use on mobile devices,” said Kristin Luck, president of Decipher.

“One of those changes includes shorter questionnaires. We are committed to making mobile a core part our clients’ research outreach and it didn’t make sense to us to charge a standard hosting fee for a survey that we ourselves recommend be quite short.”

More information can be found here.

@RESEARCH LIVE

3 Comments

10 years ago

This announcement is misleading, as surveys are not either mobile or desktop as they need to accommodate whatever the device that a consumer/panelist might use to access them. As long as the survey has been properly optimised for mobile, including alternative question formats that are especially easy to view and complete on mobile, then the survey length is not an issue.

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10 years ago

Mobile, desktop, or paper, survey length is always an issue. Much research shows that longer surveys have less engagement and poorer data quality. Obviously that is not the case for every survey nor every survey writier but it is indeed generally the case. I'm completely in favour of rewarding researchers who recognize that shorter surveys are better for everyone. To misquote T.S Eliot: "if I had more time, I would have written a shorter survey"

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10 years ago

Our research on research (published at ESOMAR and CASRO conferences) shows that with surveys up to 10 minutes in length/approximately 30 questions, respondents complete these very well even on mobile devices as long as the survey has been properly optimised and rendered on the device which they are using to access the survey. The more important objective for the industry is to finally optimise surveys properly for these devices rather than continuing to field surveys where those who access them from mobile devices, smartphones in particular (10-40%+ these days), cannot complete and as a result are not included in the results and likely don't respond the next time they are invited.

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