Tiny Tip Tuesday #49

What is survey fatigue? Is it a real thing?

Survey fatigue, or research fatigue as it is commonly called, is a decline in the performance of detailed research due to the participant becoming bored with the task. A lack of motivation to finish the survey can cause the participant to submit inaccurate responses. This can happen before a respondent even begins the survey, or while the survey is in progress.

Here are a few tips to prevent survey fatigue:

Take the survey once yourself. This is a tip experts recommend as it helps you relate to the experience of the respondent and see where fatigue is likely to arise.
Don't overwhelm your customers/respondents by requesting feedback too frequently.
Don't ask questions with obvious answers.
Use skip logic to help lead your respondents to the questions that are most relevant to them.
Clearly define the goal of your survey, and why you need this survey data. This helps you keep the survey questions focused.
Keep the number of questions small. It's said that the attention span of survey participants is generally short, and they're likely to lose interest if there are more than 30 questions.

Can you think of more ways to deal with survey fatigue? Let us know in the comments.