Rushing to the end: Participants’ perceptions of demotivating aspects of online surveys

Abstract

More and more social science studies are now acquiring data through the internet, reaching participantsonline. Some participants start out engaged and motivated to participate, but progressively slide into“rushing behaviors”. We inquired experts in survey responding about when, in online studies, theywould feel a desire for rushing (defined as speeding with no concerns about the quality of responses).This qualitative approach uncovered Repetition, Survey length and No interest in topic as the threemain features that would motivate these participants to rush in surveys. Subsequent inquiry of thesame participants indicated that repetition concerns the type of questions made (more than stimuli ortask), the execution of the same task more than 5-6 times, or for more than 6 minutes. Survey lengthconcerns a preference for shorter surveys, as well as the subjective experience in which length exceedspreviously set expectations (i.e., longer than announced), contributing to rushing by effectivelylowering the hourly pay rate as the survey increases in length. Interest in topic was reported to beconsistently low, despite not being the main reason to quit the survey. However, a change in expectedlevel of interest in the middle of the survey is reported as a factor that will promote rushing behaviors.We discuss these data as informative regarding how pre-tests of surveys can benefit from theseparticipants’ expertise.