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Quirk’s Article: Let’s play! How anyone can create more playful questionnaires
By E2E Research | January 20, 2023

Decorative imageMarket and consumer research surveys have a reputation of being boring. Obviously, that’s not a tradition any of us want to maintain because of the negative impact it has on completion rates, data quality, and costs.

 

Fortunately, we have solutions!

 

In this month’s issue of Quirk’s magazine, Annie Pettit, our Chief Research Officer, shares our perspective on how anyone can create more playful questionnaires that people will actually want to answer. You can read our article on the Quirk’s website here or check out the entire Jan/Feb 2023 issue on BlueToad here.

 

And if you’re really passionate about creating a better research experience, join Annie for an Esomar workshop where you’ll get hands on instruction and practice creating kinder, more respectful, and more playful questionnaires. Whether you’re a junior or senior agency or corporate researcher working in healthcare or mobile gaming, you’ll leave the workshop with practical knowledge you can start implementing immediately! Learn more about the Esomar workshop and register here.

 

Enjoy!

New from E2E Research! InscribeE Digital Signatures for Researchers and Business Leaders
By E2E Research | July 26, 2022
Are consent forms slowing you down?

 

Say hello to Inscribee!

 

Most businesses have moved their standard contracts, including NDAs, MSAs, and SOWs, from paper and pencil signatures to digital signatures. Electronic or digital signatures are secure, legally binding, and traceable. And, they speed up business processes immensely.

 

We can easily do the same with research participant consent forms, whether in-person or online. For fieldwork managers and vendor managers, digital signatures are particularly convenient for handling lots of forms across multiple projects and facilities. Rather than trying to store reams of consent forms and other paper contracts in filing cabinets or gigabytes of files across multiple client folders, digital signature tools allow you to prepare, maintain, and track thousands of contracts in one spot.

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How can market researchers benefit from Inscribee?

In order to encourage openness and honesty from participants, researchers want the research experience to be as personal and friendly as possible. However, we also need to ensure that both the researcher and the research participant understand what will happen and what is expected of each party. Even though they feel formal and sometimes off-putting, contracts are unavoidable. What we can do is make sure the contract process is as simple and straightforward as possible.

  • Decorative imageMid-Survey Consent: Researchers often need to gain consent during the survey experience. However, traditional signature tools require participants to exit the survey, check their email, complete a form, email it back to someone, and then return to the survey. Ultimately, this leads to unnecessary dropouts as some people will simply quit or get distracted never to return to the survey. By embedding Inscribee within a questionnaire, participants can remain in the questionnaire throughout the entire research experience. You can collect hundreds or thousands of consent forms without forcing participants leave the survey.
  • In-Person Consent: When people participate in mall intercepts or visit central location facilities to participate in focus groups, interviews, or other in-person events, researchers can avoid creating mounds of paper work by using Inscribee digital signatures. Inscribee allows the research team to collect signatures on the spot even if participants don’t have their own data-enabled digital device with them. Participants sign the document digitally on your device, whether that’s a mobile phone, tablet, or desktop computer. Participants can also provide an email address where they will receive the fully signed document.
  • Reinforce Confidentiality: It’s nearly impossible to ‘force’ research participants to not share confidential information about products or concepts they see during research. However, creating a legally binding contract is a professional way to remind participants that the only way brands can continue to invite them to participate in these kinds of research projects is if they maintain confidentiality. A short one-page document signed by the research participant midway through a research study can remind them of what they agreed to prior to participating in the study.
  • Supplementary Consent: Some exercises completed during a research study may require additional consent beyond what was originally planned. Perhaps you’ve decided to incorporate a video or audio question and need to confirm that participants understand how that data containing PII will be used. Or, perhaps a segment of people may be asked to participate in a follow-up interview. Inscribee can be embedded into the questionnaire prior to the supplementary ask to gain appropriate consent in a convenient way.

 


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How can business leaders benefit from Inscribee?

On top of being great for research fieldworkers and online questionnaire researchers, Inscribee simplifies the contracting process for business leaders, people leaders, and business development executives. It offers a full range of flexible features.

  • Supports traditional PDF documents such as NDAs, SOWs, MOUs, MSAs, and SLAs
  • Supports documents requiring one signature or many signatures
  • Supports documents requiring multiple signatures within one company or across many companies
  • Supports documents where the signees names and email addresses are known or not known
  • Can be easily embedded onto websites to accept signatures from hundreds, thousands, or millions of website visitors, users, or customers
  • Traceable, real-time tracking of signatures
  • Accepts signatures on any internet enabled device without downloads or registrations

From pitch to repurchase, Inscribee speeds up and simplifies signature processes for business leaders.
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Comprehensive

document management

Credentials and

Technical Specifications

  • Easy document management on both mobile and desktop devices
  • Unlimited number of documents
  • Automatic invitations, reminders, confirmations, and notifications
  • Document sharing with other account users
  • Standard and customized fields and branding
  • Bulk email uploads and sending
  • Easy to deploy in any survey scripting tool including Qualtrics, Confirmit, Qualtrics, Decipher, Sawtooth and more
  • Mobile-first, device and browser agnostic
  • Legally binding mobile/digital signatures via emudhra, a registered certifying authority
  • Proprietary software developed by E2E Research, an ESOMAR corporate member and ISO 27001 certified company

Click here to start your first free Inscribee document now!

8 Engaging Question Types to Improve Participants’ Survey Taking Experience
By E2E Research | May 14, 2021

From Minecraft to Fortnite and from Pinterest to TikTok, there are innumerable highly entertaining ways for people to spend their free time with their cell phones, tablets, and computers. No matter the demographics of your audience, people of every age, gender, ethnicity and more have grown to love the swiping and dragging and audio/video capabilities of their favorite online hobbies. Participant engagement matters. A lot.

 

The only way for market, opinion, and social consumer researchers to compete with those experiences is to provide people with meaningful, realistic, and entertaining ways to communicate their product and service needs to companies.

 

Fortunately, the digital research experience of the 21st century has far surpassed the paper-cut and broken pencil tip experiences of the 20th century. We can now present research participants with visually accurate stimuli, static and animated imagery, audio and video prompts, and response options that go far beyond clicking in radio buttons and check boxes. If you can think of it, expert survey scripters can create it.

 

Here are eight question types that will help you build a more engaging questionnaire and inspire new ways to think about the research experience.

 

 

Create more realistic shopping moments.

E2E Engame question animationI’ve yet to wander through a brick-and-mortar store where every product was presented to me as a black and white written description with no imagery. If a study doesn’t require the external validity of an in-store or facility shelf test, consider creating a questionnaire with high quality artwork, photographs, and animations that reflect a more realistic product selection experience.

 

Simulate a retail environment in the digital space where products are shown on a shelf, and then selected and dropped into a shopping basket. Include product details and prices as necessary. Include competitive brands on the shelf and give them compelling details as well.

 

 

 

 

Let the human mind work in a more natural way.

Traditional questionnaires list out the brand names in alphabetical order and often ask people to assign rank order numbers to them. The most desirable product is assigned the number 1 while the least desirable product is assigned the number 5 or 10 or some other larger number.

But that’s not how we really think about products. When we’re in the store, we look at all the packages, we pick up a few packages and put them back, we hold one closer and then the other closer, and we might actually lay them sid

e by side in an order. A more personal experience can be simulated by using drag and drop questions that let people “pick up” product visuals, drop them into an order, and then drag them in a different order.

Similarly, when asked to rate product packages, websites, brochures, or other visual materials, it’s quite common for questionnaires to show an image and then pose a series of  Likert scale questions. However, a Hotspot or Highlighter with drag and drop pinpoints and outlines is more natural and engaging. Think about how people normally critique a package – they hold it, point to areas, and highlight sections with their fingers. Being able to replicate an in-person experience is far more natural and meaningful.

 


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Cater to different communication styles.

Everyone communicates in different ways. Painters and authors and musicians (and those of us who aspire to be one of those!) find it easier to share opinions and ideas in visual or written or auditory ways. Further, some question types are better at capturing basic facts and straightforward opinions while other question types are better at capturing feelings and emotions.

 

We owe it to ourselves and to research participants to give everyone the opportunity to give answers that truly reflect how they feel. Instead of presenting page after page of written questions and answers, consider incorporating some visual, more projective questions that speak to the soul and the imagination. It’s a great way to think about brand or corporate personality and mission statements!

 

 

 

Collect audio and video responses.

And of course, what about people who prefer to share their opinions and ideas verbally or visually? Digital devices make it very easy to share and capture both audio and video materials.

 

Instead of an open-end or “Please specify,” consider asking people to record themselves speaking. Similarly, ask them to take a photo or video of their fridge, pantry, medicine cabinet, desk, backyard, or car. We all know a picture is worth a thousand words. A video could be priceless!

 

 

 

Help participants with the math.

For quantitative researchers running tabulations and statistical analyses day after day, it’s easy to forgot how intimidating math is for many people. Fortunately, our digital devices are ready and willing to help. At the most basic level, researchers can design questions that automatically do the math for participants – no more, “Please make sure your numbers add to 100%.”

 

Now, we can even convert counts and percentages into slider questions so that sums will always equal 5.000, 10, 100%, or $100. Banish the fear of math and make numerical responses far easier and interesting!

 

 

 

Say goodbye to grid questions.


Grids are old news. They’re boring, they’re taxing on the eyes, and they cause people to disengage and lose focus. Fortunately, there are many ways to redesign them. One of my favorite ways to present Likert scale grid questions is to present each item individually with clickable color-coded answer option beneath. As each item is answered, the next item automatically pops up. Easy peasy and fast! It’s great for short, easy to read questions.

 

There are many other alternatives for grid questions. You could drag each item or image onto the scale. You could slide each item or image across its own unique scale. You could drag each item up a ladder with 5, 7, or 9 steps or place each item somewhere on a five-level podium.

 

There are so many options beyond the typical grid that can make the questionnaire experience just a bit more interesting.

 

 

 

Get qualitative information from a quantitative tool.

When people agree to participate in a survey, they know they will be asked to click in circles and boxes, and select items from a list. Unfortunately, they’re often less interested in typing out long explanations of their answers.

 

However, when we convert a boring text box into an engaging storytelling exercise, it’s much more enjoyable to share information. Take a few minutes to figure out the story you want to hear from your customers. Work out a few story prompts and them guide them through a virtual book with pages that actually turn. With a bit of creativity, sharing verbatims can be enjoyable.

 

 

 

Ask for their final opinion about the questionnaire.

You, the researcher, were in charge of 99% of the survey experience. You told participants what the questions were and you told them what their answers could be. Once you’ve reached the end of the survey, however, it’s time to let participants be in charge. End the questionnaire in a respectful but fun way by incorporating a question that uses a bit of creativity.

 

Ask for any additional comments that weren’t included in the questionnaire or if they’d like to share their opinion of the research experience. And make sure to act on their feedback!

 

 

 

In Sum

A survey incorporating all of these question types could be quite fun but there are a few rules.

  • Don’t go overboard and use engaging question types for every single question. Sometimes, traditional questions really are the best question types. Focus on the sections of the questionnaire that are particularly challenging or disengaging, and sprinkle little bits of fun throughout.
  • Don’t aim to use as many different question types as possible. Choose two or three that really meet your needs. Consistency makes for better data quality and it helps participants feel more comfortable with their task.
  • Rather than starting with a bang, try to end with a bang. If the only place to incorporate an engaging question is at the very beginning of a questionnaire, think about whether you really need that question. You don’t want to question #1 to be amazing and then follow that up with ten minutes of boring traditional questions.
  • Remember that more than a third of participants answer questionnaires on mobile devices. Be aware of the size and space limitations those devices have. Remember that not everyone will be in an environment where they can play sounds and movies. Choose question types that are appropriate for your audience, their locations, and their devices.

 

The widgets you see here are just a few of the more than 100 templated and fully customizable widgets we’ve already built for our clients. With your imagination and your knowledge of your products and your consumers, any of these widgets could be customized to meet your specific needs. Or, if you’ve been inspired and have an idea for a brand new question, let us know! We’d love to create an engaging question just for you. Your imagination is the limit!

 

Download our Questionnaire Engagement Share Sheet to learn how we help research companies throughout the entire survey design, scripting, analysis, and reporting process. Or, feel free to email your project specifications to our research experts using Projects at E2Eresearch dot com.

 

 

Learn more from our case studies

Great reads about questionnaire design