I was sitting at my desk, staring at my inbox with the kind of disappointment I had usually reserved for when someone ate the last kanelbulle from the fika room (I did my PhD in Sweden, for cultural reference). My perfect research questionnaire had been out in the wild for a week, and I had exactly eight responses. Not the hundreds I dreamed of (or wanted). Not eight hundred. Not eighty. Eight. Fuuuu….
My colleague’s words echoed in my head: “You know, you study might fail not because of bad methodology, but because you just might not get enough participants.” The guy was a few fries short of a happy meal, but he was right. What a smart prick, I pondered for a second.
If you’re nodding along in painful recognition while I’m telling you this, you’re my people. The academic world doesn’t prepare us for the reality of creating questionnaires. The ones people actually want to complete. And for recruiting participants who don’t immediately delete your email, which really is an art form unto itself.
But the good news is that after trying (and failing!) many times to get people to fill out my surveys, I’ve learned what works. And yes, that includes the time I thought about quitting to become a professional ice cream taster instead (still thinking about it sometimes though). Now I’m ready to share my tips with you. Here’s my guide to getting those precious survey responses you need.
Why your questionnaire is secretly terrible (sorry!)
I need to tell you something about that questionnaire you’ve been working on for weeks. What I learned the hard way is that even our best-planned surveys can totally miss the mark. Not because we lack skill, but because good questionnaire design just takes solid practice. Trust me, I’ve been there. And I can help you make it better.
Write clear questions users can understand
Remember back in undergrad when your professor assigned that one reading where you understood approximately three words per page? (Was it William Faulkner? 🤣) That’s how participants feel when they encounter showstopping academic jargon in your questionnaire.
Instead of asking: “Rate your level of engagement with the user interface’s navigational architecture:”
Try something a little easier on the eyes and brain: “How easy was it to find what you needed on the app?”
The first makes people’s eyes glaze over faster than a PowerPoint presentation from the leadership team at 4:30 PM on a Friday afternoon. Snorelax, man. The second might actually get answered.
Avoiding double-barrelled questions
One of the most common questionnaire sins is the double-barrelled question. It’s like asking someone “Do you like chocolate and broccoli?” (I’m actually weird and I do.) How do they answer if they love chocolate but hate broccoli with the burning passion of a thousand suns? Well, they won’t, they’d rather run away to Mars (love that song, sorry).
I once included this batshit beauty in a survey: “How satisfied are you with the speed and reliability of the game controls?” Luckily, I piloted that sucker and found got some feedback along the lines of “yes, it’s fast but crashes every 20 minutes.” Point taken. Right there. Split those conjoined question twins into separate entities. We’re not filming American Horror Story Season 4 here and your question shouldn’t be the Tattler twins.
Make it run on mobile
So, sure, you might run your survey as part of a lab experiment and you’re providing the computers and everything. But there is also the scenario, where you put it out in the wild and you don’t quite know how people answer it. A busy professional might get your survey link, opens it on their phone during their commute, sees it’s a horizontal scrolling nightmare that looks like it was designed for a 1998 desktop computer, and promptly closes it forever. Not fun. Most people (about 70% of young adults) fill out surveys on their phones these days. If your survey looks bad on mobile, you’re saying goodbye to a lot of responses.
The good news? Testing is simple. Just open your survey on different devices before you share it. I now always ask a few students to test the surveys on their different phones. It takes 5 minutes and saves me from those “why isn’t anyone responding?” moments.
More strategy in participant recruitment
If “please, please fill out my survey” has become your mantra, it’s time for a strategic overhaul.
The Multi-Channel Recruitment Framework
Don’t fall into the email-only trap like I did! I learned it the hard way that sending mass emails and hoping for responses is about as effective as trying to catch fish in my coffee mug. My whole approach changed when I started thinking like a marketer instead of a desperate researcher. Here’s what I mean:
- Email. Still effective, but personalize those subject lines.
- Social Media. Target platforms where your demographic actually hangs out. Reddit is great for certain fields. X is pretty much dead these days and full of ChatGPT bots.
- Research Communities. Some subreddits on Reddit exist specifically for research recruitment. Some Discord servers have huge communities attached.
- Existing Networks. Never underestimate the power of asking people you know to share with people they know.
The timing conspiracy nobody tells you about
A secret that took me years to discover was that “when” you send your recruitment message matters almost as much as “what” it says.
Surveys distributed mid-morning (9–11am) on Tuesdays through Thursdays yield approximately 24% higher response rates than those sent at other times. It’s like the universe has a schedule for when people feel generous with their time. Follow it.
One last tip from my own painful experience: Don’t send out surveys during finals week or end-of-semester crunch time. Students and faculty are too busy pulling all-nighters and grading papers to fill out your survey. Trust me, crunch time gets you about as many responses as a salad bar at 3 AM on a Monday morning.
What to do for better response rates
Despite your best efforts, sometimes response rates still resemble a ghost town. Here’s where the rescue operation begins.
Follow-ups
The art of the reminder is subtle. Too aggressive, and you’re annoying; too passive, and you’re forgotten. The sweet spot? A structured approach with multiple touchpoints:
- Initial invitation. Your first, enthusiastic outreach
- First reminder. 3–5 days later, gentle nudge
- Final notice. 7–10 days after initial invitation, create urgency
Each message should have a distinct tone. A successful personalized final reminder could open with something like: “Last chance to contribute to research that might actually change how we design mobile applications (and help me avoid having an existential crisis about my PhD).”
That touch of vulnerability and humour should increase your reply rate.
Think about incentives
Let’s talk money and motivation for a bit. So, should you pay people to fill out your survey? A quick web search provides a clear answer: smaller guaranteed incentives ($5 for everyone) typically outperform larger lottery-based incentives (chance to win $500).
When budget constraints make even small incentives impossible, consider non-monetary options:
- Early access to research findings
- Professional networking opportunities
- Contributing to meaningful research (surprisingly effective)
Survey fixer upper
Combat the dreaded survey fatigue by designing an engaging experience:
- Visual appeal. Make your design clean and professional to match your target audience
- Progress indicators. Show a progress bar to keep participants motivated
- Question variation. Keep participants engaged by using different types of questions
- Storytelling. Guide participants through a natural flow instead of random questions
Turn that cold questionnaire into a friendly chat, but make sure to keep your questions valid. Best way to get some flavour text in, is in the instructions before and after. But it all has to go through ethics clearance first, so make sure you start drafting this early.
Always ethics first
While chasing responses, never compromise on ethics. The pressure to gather sufficient data can sometimes conflict with ethical practices. In general ethics boards will have to approve your survey when you’re working at a university. But in general, you maintain your integrity by:
- Avoiding undue influence. Separate recruitment from power relationships
- Ensuring voluntary participation. Create genuine opportunities to decline
- Providing transparent information. Give potential participants sufficient details
Ethical recruitment not only protects participants but typically yields higher-quality data through authentic engagement. If you have a deception study, you’ll have to work with your ethics board to guarantee proper disclosure at the end.
Some parting words for the data-hungry
Getting questionnaire responses takes both planning and people skills. I learned that good planning means thinking through all the details. But what really matters is connecting with people in a way that makes them want to help. From my experience teaching research methods, students who build those connections get way more responses than those who just send out cold emails.
Remember that behind every response (or lack thereof) is a human making decisions based on competing priorities. Your job is to make participating in your research feel worthwhile, accessible, and maybe even enjoyable.
And when all else fails, remember the academic researcher’s mantra: adjust expectations, extend deadlines, and know that every single response is a small victory against the void of non-response.
