SurveyMonkey Office Hours

Sarah Cho, Survey Research Scientist August 5, 2014

Today’s topic: Thinking “Smarter” About Surveys – Tips for Keeping Your Mobile Device

Respondents Happy

2

What are mobile devices?

3

Why does this matter for surveys?

4

• According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of adults have mobile devices:

- 90% of American adults have a cell phone- 58% of American adults have a smartphone- 42% of American adults own a tablet computer

• Due to the proliferation of mobile device ownership, this means that surveys are also increasingly are being completed on mobile devices, so it is important keep mobile in mind throughout all steps of the survey process

• In fact, about one in seven surveys completed on SurveyMonkey are done through a mobile device

Why does this matter for surveys?

5

• Not devices come in all shapes, sizes, operating systems, connection type

Do all surveys have to be mobile optimized?

6

• Nope, so make sure you think about the context in which you are sending out your survey and who you are sending it out to. Here are some examples:

Reasons related to target population Reasons related to context

A survey sent out to employees at a tech company during the middle of the day – NO

A feedback survey you are asking people to fill out on the spot – YES

A survey of college students on their purchasing behavior – YES

A feedback survey you’ve set up a computer kiosk to gather responses – NO

Surveys for Mobile Devices

7

• Optimizing the design of your survey for mobile devices- Question types- Survey Formatting- Multimedia- Length and Final Steps

• Collecting responses through mobile devices• Tips during analysis phase

Mobile Survey Design: Multiple Choice Question Type

8

• Okay to use

• Keep question wording short

• Format response options vertically, not horizontally to minimize horizontal scrolling

Mobile Survey Design: Dropdown Question Type

9

• Only use when there are lots of response options

• Make sure to order the options in a logical order (e.g., alphabetize) so that response options are easy to find

Mobile Survey Design: Open-Ended Question Types

10

• Minimize open-ends to one or two per survey and ones that can be answered in a few short words

• Typing is difficult on a mobile device, so these are hard for respondents to complete and also hard for the survey creator to analyze due to typos and autocorrect

Mobile Survey Design: Matrix/Rating Question Type

11

• If at all possible don’t use this question type

• Matrix/rating questions are formatted horizontally and will be especially hard to read if there are lots of answer options since the formatting will be off and scrolling may be required

Mobile Survey Design – Survey Formatting

12

• Number of questions per page: As few as possible- Note, there is a fine balance though – surveys with too many

pages may be irritating because they have to wait for each page to load

• Limit required questions to only the MOST important ones

• Skip progress bars and logos: these take up valuable screen real estate. If you are including a logo, make sure to shrink the size so it isn’t too big

Mobile Survey Design – Multimedia

13

• Beware of bandwidth constraints: videos and sometimes even images can be slow to load on mobile devices or not load at all

• Compress large images: clarity, but also less data to stream to the device. - One situation where you don’t want to compress: when the image is

an important part of your survey

• Use a universal media player: If including multimedia, make sure to use a universal player like YouTube. Not all mobile operating systems can handle all video file types.

Mobile Survey Design – Length and Final Steps

14

• Keep your survey as short as possible- Shorter surveys are easier for respondents to complete- They also don’t drain the battery as much, which means

you are less likely to get incomplete responses due to folks dropping out

• Put yourself in the respondents’ shoes and test out your survey on multiple devices

Collecting Data Through Mobile Surveys

15

• Email out the link to your survey- Don’t forget to make sure that your email renders well on

mobile devices

• Other alternatives- Text out a link - Use QR codes- If you need to provide a web address to type in, make it easier

for the respondent and use a URL shortener so they have less to type

Analyzing the data

16

• Use the SurveyMonkey app to monitor results on the go as they roll in

• Throughout the analysis process, keep in mind that folks are responding on mobile devices and think about how that could influence the results

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+surveymonkey/posts

YouTube: youtube.com/surveymonkey

Twitter: @SurveyMonkey

Facebook: facebook.com/SurveyMonkey

17

Questions? Don’t be shy!