Human Survey-Interaction. Usability and Nonresponse in Online Surveys

Response rates are a key quality indicator of surveys. The human-survey interaction framework developed in this book provides new insight in what makes respondents leave or complete an online survey. Many respondents suffer from difficulties when trying to answer survey questions. This results in omitted answers and abandoned questionnaires. Lars Kaczmirek explains how applied usability in surveys increases response rates. Here, central aspects addressed in the studies include error tolerance and useful feedback. Recommendations are drawn from seven studies and experiments. The results report on more than 33,000 respondents sampling from many different populations such as students, people above forty, visually impaired and blind people, and survey panel members. The results show that improved usability significantly boosts response rates and accessibility. This work clearly demonstrates that human-survey interaction is a cost-effective approach in the overall context of survey methodology.