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May 16, 2018. Today on RBDR:
InnovateMR’s Chief Research Officer Lisa Wilding-Brown blogged for Women In Research about the great opportunity and unseen importance of mobile research in turning around the long-decaying respondent cooperation problem.
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If mobile is our last stand against respondent loss then we are in big trouble, which is probably the case anyway. Mobile has all kinds of problems in terms of national random probability studies such as too many younger people, too many females, more active than general population, never sure who you are talking to etc. etc. Most people don’t like surveys on their cell phones, it ties up their line, depending on payment plan, it can cost the respondent money, the survey has to be very short, etc. The only consistent solution, I have found is paying people a dollar per minute for their time on their cable/landline phone or on their computer.
I know the large quantitative recruiting firms have studied the reasons for respondents dropping out of panels. What have they found to be the primary reasons for people deciding not to take surveys? If we think of respondents as “customers,” I would hope that we have a wealth of information on why response rates have declined. However, since we have not broken this trend, I have to wonder. As an industry, let’s practice what we preach and study the phenomenon much like we would suggest P&G or Nestle study a problem where they have been losing customers for years.
Studies on declining response rates have been done many times before by individual companies, and such trade associations as CASRO and AAPOR among others. If my memory is correct then respondents had concerns about privacy, were bored with questionnaires particularly on product/service repetitive and comparative questions, had little discretionary time to devote to surveys, wanted to be handsomely compensated for their time, didn’t trust the results, too many perceived biases in the question wordings, hated questionnaire matrixes, or being asked questions on subjects they knew nothing about, didn’t know whether the client company or survey research firm could be trusted to report the results honestly, etc. etc. All in all, not easy problems or trust issues to resolve.