I had a different topic all worked out and then a different thread emerged.

I’ve just been sent a digest from a Chamber of Commerce and one of the links was for a survey to assess the views of apprenticeships.  Now I hope you’ll forgive me… but I’m sure you do this too when encountering exposure to a competitor.  Yes….. I clicked on the survey link for a nosey.

My thoughts….. well it wasn’t visually very stimulating.  Rendered poorly (it was a Populus survey by the way) in the web browser.  It didn’t have a welcome.  And my biggest bugbear, it only had one question per page making it feel like an epic time consuming survey.  Actually, my biggest fault with it was it asking me for lots of company information before I got into the swing of it.  The first 2 questions before I dropped out were,  how many employee’s my company had and what region the HQ was.

The sweetener they used was a free ipod draw.  Now if there is 1 ipod and say 300 responses your chances are slender.  So they get your data, get your e-mail address (populus often ask for e-mail addresses… and how can they send you the ipod if you win otherwise?).  I just thought it was a shame.  We prefer to ask the questions for views and opinions and then if we need to analyse the information on say company size or gender or demographic, we ask that at the end and are open about it.

Anyway, I digress….. Why do people take part in online surveys?

Are we naive in thinking truth, fairness, honesty and accuracy and sharing what people think are enough?  Do people really want to be rewarded financially or with a prize draw to give some information?

Do you only take part in topics that have or may directly affect you?  Do you care what the results are?  Do you take part if at work or at home?  Is it dependent on day of the week, time of day, the season and whether its sunny or a snow drift?

We’re just curious….. so come on….. what makes you click on a survey link?

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Research uncovered. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.