Take your time

Research is a profession that should be carried out by experts. The biggest threat to quick and cost-efficient research is that the quality is almost always suffering. DVJ wants research to remain good. Even when it is quick and against low cost. For this reason, we regularly share examples of mistakes and best practises in the market. We share our thoughts and possible solutions to improve research. By following these tips, we can make research better. This time the honour belonged to Research Expert Lisette Kruizinga – de Vries.

Research is a profession where lots of mistakes can be made. My passion for research starts with making a questionnaire that is fun and easy for respondents and doesn’t take too much time to fill out. In that way, the most valid responses will be obtained which ensures high quality insights for our clients.

Recently, I received an invitation to fill out a survey. Below you see an extract from the invitation:

Dear Lisette, at the moment you have xxx points. Herewith we invite you for a new research.

Note: this survey takes about 80-100 minutes to fill out, so take your time.

My first reaction to this invite was: “What?? Seriously? I am not going to fill this out!” So, this is the first downfall of this mistake; it is probably very difficult to find respondents who want to fill out this survey. At the same time, it can lead to response bias, since people that are willing to fill out such a long survey, must take a special type of person. Other risks are that respondents drop-out before completing the survey, that people start to rush through the survey or will skip parts of the survey. These issues will lead to low data quality or unusable responses.

A mistake like this can easily be prevented though. My advice is that surveys should not be longer than 20 minutes to fill in. Preferably, surveys should be a maximum of 10 minutes. Also, always fill out the survey yourself (is it easy and fun?) and see how long it takes to fill out and imagine if you were a respondent yourself.