by Victor Tran, SFU Student
Once in a while, students get emails asking them to complete surveys for SFU, external companies, and even other students. Even though these surveys can be completed in students’ free time, they still demand time-consuming labour, with some surveys taking up to 15–20 minutes to complete. Because of this, survey compensation should be required, as it will not only pay for our labour but also increase response rates.
Every survey estimated to take 10 minutes or more should come with compensation for the best chance of success. Spending more than 10 minutes on a survey without any rewards can be a real pain, especially surveys with 40–50 questions, which can be demanding on a person’s time and attention. Consequently, the longer the survey, the worse the answer quality. Survey abandonment rates also increase with longer surveys, with 7–8 minute surveys seeing completion rates drop to as low as 5%. Survey compensation could solve this problem effectively.
With survey rewards, participants will have more incentive to finish a long survey. Though survey prizes may not sound appealing to businesses and schools who have to pay for them, the effect can be beneficial to both students and survey creators.
The most popular survey prizes are direct rewards and indirect rewards, each with pros and cons. Direct rewards (either monetary or non-monetary) are prizes given directly to the survey taker. This kind of reward can be very effective — especially for students — as free stuff can be appealing. Yet, not all free rewards are enticing to everyone. For example, if a person who doesn’t own a pet sees the reward is a voucher for a pet store, they may not take the survey. Survey creators can solve this issue by letting survey takers choose a more relevant reward. This can be done by working with a wide range of product suppliers to diversify the reward pool or launching a reward survey to indicate the most wanted prizes. Thus, survey creators may obtain a wider range of results as more people flock into filling in the questions for relevant compensation.
However, direct rewards have the potential to hurt the survey results. People might rush through the questions just for the rewards or complete irrelevant surveys — like if a person who doesn’t own a pet completes a pet store survey. Survey creators need to compensate their ideal patrons in an appropriate way to get optimal results.
Indirect rewards have the potential to do that. These rewards are when survey creators make a charitable donation in the participant’s name. This type of reward may not be as effective as direct rewards in increasing response rates. However, indirect rewards can potentially increase the quality of the survey results. Participants may want to complete the survey to help others and therefore won’t rush through them for self-interest. Surveys with indirect rewards would be perfect for students who want to help others easily by exchanging their time and effort to complete a survey.
For student-run surveys, due to the costs of this kind of compensation, it might not be possible to offer rewards. Instead, students could choose alternative options such as making the surveys shorter for an increased response rate. Yet, with large corporations and organizations like SFU, compensation is a must for all participants. Not only because of benefits brought to both parties, but also for the labour demanded from survey participants.
Compensation is needed for the benefit of both participants and survey creators. Students give their labour and time for the benefit of survey creators; thus compensation is needed to pay off that labour. However, they have to acknowledge that the type of compensation can make or break survey results, requiring an adequate method to give it.
