This commentary by Andrew Cannon, GRBN Executive Director, can also be found on page 77 of the latest GRIT report. The recent GRIT Consumer Participation in Research report (GRIT CPR) states its main finding loud and clear:
“Only a quarter of all respondents globally are satisfied with their experience participating in research”
The findings in the GRIT CPR report are in-line with the findings in our own study of online survey user experience. Reading these two reports, there is no hiding from the conclusion that too often people are being given a bad experience when participating in research and we are turning them off. Please take a moment to reflect on what you would recommend to a client armed with this type of data? Action or inaction? Even without knowing the specifics, I think most of us would recommend the client to do something about it? Right?
The cobbler’s children have no shoes
And yet, the evidence shows that many of us are not doing anything, or at least not enough about it. Why? I can think of four basic reasons:
  1. People don’t know it is a problem
  2. People know it is a problem, but don’t know what to do about it
  3. People know it is a problem, know what to do about it, but feel powerless to influence it
  4. People know it is a problem, but don’t care
Through reports such as the GRIT CPR report and thought-pieces like this, we are getting the message out there, and fortunately most of the recommended actions are relatively easy to implement. But to act, we also need to care.
Why you need to care
Our evidence suggests that not only is poor participant engagement damaging data quality, it is having a longer-term damaging effect on the reputation of business, of marketing in general and specifically of the companies and brands commissioning research. If people have a bad experience with a survey they tend to either drop out or rush through the questions. Interestingly, many also think badly about the companies/brands in survey, in effect blaming the end-client for the poor experience, and in these days of hyper-connectivity, tell others about the bad experience. In order to understand why they blame the end-client, we need to understand people’s motivations for participating in research. Yes, financial incentives are important, but also the desire to influence things is a strong motivator for many participants. They want to have their opinion count and in particular, many want to help companies and brands they like. Therefore, if in return for their willingness to help, they are treated without respect and given a poor experience, it hurts. So, by giving bad user experiences we are not only damaging ourselves, but also our clients, either directly or indirectly. Therefore, most of us should care.
Transparency as a motivator
Both reports tell us that the simple act of telling people who the survey is for can have a powerful influence on people’s willingness to participate. Obviously, it is not always advisable to do this during the recruitment phase, but I think in most cases there is no barrier to doing so afterwards. I am old enough to have cut my teeth in face-to-face and telephone data collection. Back then it was standard practice to end the survey with something along the lines of:

”Thank you for taking the time to answer this survey, which we are conducting on behalf of CLIENT X.“

  Somehow, this practice got lost when we switched to online data collection, but I think it is high time to reinstate this practice, and I challenge you do this on your surveys from now on. There are many other things we need to do to improve participant experience, but let this simple change be a start.
Join us if you care
Together with a growing number of corporate partners, GRBN is undertaking a Participant Engagement Initiative in order to drive  up participation rates across the globe. You can read more about the initiative here. If you want to get involved, please get in touch. You can access the full GRIT report from here.

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