We have been running a pulse survey for the past few months, once every two weeks, and have noticed a drop-off in return rates. Has anyone else experienced this, and do you have any suggestions on how to address this?
Question
How to boost participation in pulse surveys
+15Hi KatA I can't speak to your specific situation (pulse survey every two weeks), but I can share the things I think about when trying to increase response rates:
Burden: Can you shorten the survey or run it less often?
Incentives: Can you offer any incentives for participation? (e.g., random drawing for a gift card or gift card for everyone who completes a full 3 months of surveys?)
Promotion/Personalization: Sending reminders, having someone in a position of authority encourage people to reply, etc.
Also, are you seeing a lot of changes? If things aren't moving much from survey to survey, I'd scale back frequency.
+67KatA I second all of ClairJ 's suggestions. Anything that you can do to lessen the burden or create incentives for people to participate will help increase your response rates. Also, she's correct that if you are not seeing much change for each pulse, consider lessening the frequency to a period when you may see changes.
Also, have you learned any insights from previous surveys that you can incorporate into future surveys? For example:
- If respondents indicated an interest in your organization to take a certain action, did you take that action? If you did, can you ask questions about it (for example, related to awareness or value of that action)?
- Has something in the underlying environment change during the period? For example, if you are surveying employees, can you ask them about how changes in expectations about schools opening may have impacted their outlook?
- Have you seen other changes in responses? For example, higher or lower satisfaction? You can ask questions that may uncover insights there.
Lower return rates generally indicate some kind of survey fatigue, which is usually a suggestion that you can deliver the survey less frequently, or ask questions that respondents want to talk with you about. I hope that helps!
Adam Korengold, NLM/SCI (he/him/his)
ClairJ and AdamK12, thank you both for the great suggestions. I think you are both right about the return rate being potentially due to survey fatigue. We have also updated the survey, so it can build upon the responses we have been getting and adjust to the constantly changing situation. And good news, we have scaled back the frequency, so will see how this next round goes and hopefully we do not see the continued downward trend in completed surveys.
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