IMPROVING RESPONSE RATES AND QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN FOR MOBILE WEB SURVEYS

This research note presents the results of an experiment that investigated how response rates and data quality could be improved for smartphone web surveys. First, we compare how invitations by text message versus by e-mail affect response rate. Text message invitations result in a similar total response rate as e-mail invitations when considering response via all types of online devices. When considering response via smartphones only, the survey completion rate is significantly higher. The text message contact mode also leads to a faster speed of initial response. Second, we examine the response effects of several questionnaire-design choices when using smartphones: paging versus scrolling, horizontal versus vertical question layout, number of answer options, and open-ended versus closed-ended questions. According to our findings, a scrolling layout leads to a shorter completion time than a paging layout. We further suggest that caution be used with horizontal and long-answer scales as well as open-ended text answer fields in smartphone surveys.