Of The Following, Which Type Of Data Collection Method Is Likely To Have The Lowest Response Rate?

Terminal Updated: August nine, 2021.

What is the average survey response rate?

The short answer? 33%.

The long respond is a bit more nuanced though.

Since there is no agreed-upon minimum acceptable response rate, it will largely depend on how y'all go about creating, distributing, and collecting your survey.

Nevertheless, over the years a lot of studies have been done on what the boilerplate response rate of a survey should exist and which parameters have an influence on it. We've combined all this information into ane infographic containing the nearly recent data.

But before we dive into the numbers, it'south of import to have a clear understanding of what exactly the response rate is.

What Is a Response Rate?

In survey research, the response rate is the number of people who answered the survey divided by the number of people y'all sent the survey to (the sample), then multiply that number past 100, since information technology is usually expressed in the form of a per centum.

How Do You lot Summate the Response Rate?

Response Charge per unit = (# of people who answered the survey / # of people you sent the survey to) Ten 100

If you lot sent a survey to 500 people, and 200 of them fill information technology out, your response rate would be 40%, since (200/500) x 100 = 40%

Seems pretty straightforward, doesn't it? So, why is the response charge per unit so important?

Importance of Response Rate in Surveys

A low response rate tin can requite rise to sampling bias if the nonresponse is unequal amongst the participants regarding the event.

For example:

If you select a sample of yard managers in a field and enquire them nearly their workload, the managers with a high workload may not answer the survey considering they practice not have enough time to respond it, and/or those with a low workload may decline to respond out of fear that their supervisors or colleagues will perceive them as surplus employees.

Therefore, non-response bias may make the measured value for the workload too depression, too loftier, or, if they residue each other out, "correct for the wrong reasons."

A survey's response rate has ever been viewed equally an of import indicator of survey quality. Yet, contempo studies have shown that surveys with lower response rates (near twenty%) had more than accurate measurements compared to surveys with higher response rates (near threescore or lxx%). Even so, in spite of these recent research studies, a higher response rate is preferable because the missing information is not random. A high response rate (>80%) from a small, random sample is preferable to a low response charge per unit from a large sample.

Now nosotros've got that out of the way, it's fourth dimension to motility on to the main course of this commodity.

The most effective survey method is yet the in-person survey with 57%. In-person surveys can exist held at the moment when the survey is most relevant and allows for the most personalized experience.

The mail service survey comes second with fifty%. Equally people are living in an increasing digitalized world, receiving an invitation via real post gives a more premium experience. The downside of this survey method is the college price.

3rd on the listing is the e-mail survey, with an average response rate of xxx%. People are receiving more spam emails every day and, unfortunately, spam filters are extremely difficult on the word survey.

TIP: Don't apply the give-and-take survey in your e-mail subject line to increase your survey response rate by ten%. Cheque out our 34 other tips to improve your survey response rate.

Some other fob is to add your survey to a confirmation or later on service/buy electronic mail, this guarantees your survey is sent out at a relevant timing.

Next, we have the web or online survey. As mentioned earlier it is often difficult to go an accurate view on the survey invitations needed to accurately summate the survey response rate.

Second to last nosotros have the phone survey. The response rate for phone survey has been failing the past 2 decades. And this trend is not changing anytime soon. All the same, studies have shown that despite depression response rates, phone surveys are able to produce accurate results.

Finally, in that location's the in-app survey. This is a rather new survey method and there's not a lot of information published on this topic. Like to the online survey it is proven difficult to become an accurate definition of who is invited to the survey and who is non.

When we accumulate all this information into one number, we find an average survey response rate of 33%.

5 Factors That Touch on Response Rate

There are five primary parameters that touch on your questionnaire response rate:

ane. Survey Purpose

Before you brand up any kind of survey, you take to know what you want to accomplish. It'south very of import to take a clear goal in mind. In one case you accept this figured it will be a lot easier to convince people to take your survey.

Opening with "Tin can I ask you a few quick questions?" is as well vague and will decrease your survey response charge per unit with 11% percent compared to a specific survey introduction "In social club to improve our customer service, we would like to ask you 5 quick questions"

two. Survey Feel

The survey has to look appealing and should ideally concenter the attending of your target audience, both in style equally in linguistic communication. Y'all need to make sure everything is clear, easy to read and to fill in. About survey makers on the market provide ready-to-utilize survey templates, so you don't have to start from scratch when it comes to designing the survey and crafting the questions.

For online surveys, it's important to make your survey responsive and you should limit the number of clicks needed to complete the survey.

Try to personalize the survey also. Dirk Heerwegh's 2005 study into personalized invites for online surveys (due east.thou. 'Beloved John' as opposed to 'Dear Client') concluded that personalized survey invites increased response rates by seven.8%. In addition, respondents that received these invites were 2.6% less likely to drop off before completing all survey questions.

I've already mentioned the importance of language: Endeavor to get into the mindset of your customer and make questions based on that. Or follow our tips to sound more homo in your survey. Make sure you use a multifariousness of question types such as multiple choice, rating, Likert calibration, etc. Each question type has its strengths.

3. Survey Length

People get distracted very fast, so you should only ask questions y'all Need to know.

As mentioned before having a survey with more than 12 questions or that takes longer than v minutes to complete come across a xv% drop in response rate. The drop is even bigger (up to 40%) when a survey takes longer than 10 minutes to complete.

Tell your respondents how long it will take to complete the survey before they start. And make sure you don't exceed that timeframe.

four. Survey Audience

A common fault is sending the same survey to different audiences and expecting the aforementioned response rate.

When y'all're aiming at a B2C audience, you tin can expect a response rate that'southward 12% lower than a B2B audience. Creating an internal survey will have a 20% higher response rate compared to an external survey.

5. Survey Incentives

People don't like to do stuff for complimentary anymore. They need motivation or incentive to get them going. For example, some people prefer to have surveys for money. Studies accept shown that having an incentive tin can increase your response with 10 to 15% depending on the quality and attractiveness of the incentive to your target audience.

The consensus amidst many research experts is that 'useful, relevant data' is the well-nigh effective grade of incentive to business audiences. For instance, the information they provide you will help y'all improve certain aspects of your products or services – in turn resulting in a better experience for your customers.

This is called an intrinsic reward.

It's better to focus on informing respondents about the intrinsic rewards of completing a survey every bit respondents will empathise that it'due south in their best interest to answer the survey questions as honestly and completely every bit possible.

You might as well decide to offer extrinsic rewards, such every bit coupons, discounts, and other deals, to customers who take the fourth dimension to respond to your survey. Coupon promotion is a fourth dimension-tested strategy when it comes to getting survey results. Needless to say, this might make some customers more likely to complete the survey, the downside to providing extrinsic rewards is that some individuals might complete the survey just to receive their reward.

Those who approach the survey with this mindset may or may non actually have the process seriously, significant you might end up with a agglomeration of invalid or otherwise unusable responses.

You can avert such instances by providing an incentive that, while extrinsic in nature, isn't of whatsoever extreme value.

This statement is also supported by a study conducted by due east-Rewards Market Research, two random sample selections utilized: 4,000 people were invited to complete the survey for entry into a sweepstake drawing of $2,500, and another 4,000 people were invited to complete the survey for $2.00 in cash. Both groups launched and closed on the same twenty-four hours of the week and the same time of the day. It was a one-minute survey most books and music.

The results: Inside 7 days after sending the invite, response rates were:

19.iii% for $2 cash 'pay all' sample.
12.2% for $2500 sweepstake sample.

This proves that people adopt to complete a survey when they are certain they'll receive something instead of the slim run a risk of winning a big prize.

Say you're surveying customers who bought something on an eastward-commerce store like Amazon, Etsy, or eBay. Using a split up testing tool such as PickFu, you can enquire consumers what kind or how much of an incentive would motivate them to make full out a survey. Their feedback tin can aid y'all figure out an incentive amount.

Remarks On Response Rate

For in-person or phone surveys it is pretty straightforward to define who is invited to have the survey: How many people did you enquire or phone call to participate?

For e-mail surveys, it gets a scrap trickier.

Do you count all the emails y'all sent out? With or without bounced emails? Or do you count only those who opened the email? Depending on which one you lot take you tin can significantly inflate your response charge per unit.

When y'all utilize a web survey, it gets even harder.

It is difficult to define the number of invitations for an embedded survey on a webpage since a web company is only presented the survey, but technically not invited. Counting everyone who visited this page as invited tin lead to very depression response rates.

So what can you practise in this case?

You could calculate the survey completion rate instead of the survey response charge per unit.

What is Survey Completion Rate?

The survey completion rate is calculated by dividing the number of surveys filled out with the number of surveys started by respondents. So only those respondents who entered and completed the survey volition be included in this statistic.