Question

When creating a survey, marketing researchers must strike the right balance between covering enough information to gain useful data and making the questionnaire short enough that people will finish it. The longer the questionnaire, the less likely people are to take the time to answer all the questions. Most marketing researchers concur that if a questionnaire takes longer than 15 minutes to answer, people will often not finish it. What is the importance of striking the right balance when creating a survey?

1) To ensure that people finish the questionnaire
2) To gather enough information for useful data
3) To make the questionnaire short
4) To save time for marketing researchers

Answer 1

Striking the right balance when creating a survey is important to ensure respondents complete the survey and adequate data is collected for the research to be useful. The KISS principle is used by marketing researchers to create brief yet informative surveys.

Step-by-step explanation:

When creating a survey, the primary importance of striking the right balance is to ensure that people finish the questionnaire and to gather enough information for useful data. This balance is crucial because a lengthy questionnaire can deter participants from completing it, leading to a lower response rate and potential bias in the data collected. Conversely, a survey that is too brief may not capture all the necessary information for the research to be beneficial. To address this, researchers often design surveys with closed questions to enable easy response and data tabulation, while still including some open questions to obtain qualitative insights.

Marketing researchers align with the 'Keep It Short and Simple' (KISS) principle to maximize both participation rates and the quality of information collected. When a survey respects respondents’ time and cognitive load, it is more likely to yield reliable and comprehensive data sets useful for informed decision-making. Time efficiency is also an advantage for researchers, although it is not the primary concern when balancing survey length and content.