Organizations that conduct surveys can benefit from the valuable information they provide. They can offer unique insight into customer perceptions, market opinions, employee morale, and daily operational issues. Aside from the proper design and execution of a survey, one of the main challenges is getting people to participate. Over the past 20 years, response rates to surveys have plummeted. This decline in participation is due to a few reasons, including growing privacy concerns, fear of identity theft, and limitations of time. As response rates continue to decrease, the value of participation increases.

To encourage people to take part in surveys, many organizations have started offering incentives. While doing so boosts response rates, incentivizing participation may not be a good solution for every organization. In this article, we'll explain some of the challenges that offering incentives can cause. Then, we'll explore different types of incentives that may be appropriate.

Increasing Costs

If your organization pays for responses, the most obvious (though not necessarily the most important) challenge is one of cost. If you are paying each respondent $5 to participate in your survey, a large sample of 2,000 people will cost $10,000 (excluding other costs). The data that your survey gathers may justify this cost. On the other hand, it may not. Only a careful review of how you intend to use the data can determine whether a cash incentive is justified.

There is another cost, though less obvious. If your organization conducts regular surveys of the same population, offering a cash incentive can create that expectation over time. If you fail to provide an incentive in the future, you may see your response rate plummet.

Are Larger Response Rates Better?

Survey response rates tend to climb quickly when an organization offers to pay respondents for their participation. On the surface, that may seem like a positive result. After all, a greater response implies more data with a higher level of confidence in its accuracy, right? Not necessarily. The fact is, when an incentive is offered (especially a cash incentive), less attention is given to the answers and more attention is given to the gift. As a result, respondents may speed through the questions and the validity of their answers may decline. In this case, a larger survey response rate can actually impact the overall usefulness of your entire data pool.

Overcoming Unfavorable Perceptions

Another challenge of conducting paid surveys is that this segment of the survey industry is filled with organizations whose practices border on fraud. There are thousands of "businesses" that offer to pay people to respond to surveys from home. Often, payment is never sent or the payment is so small as to prompt waves of complaints. While your organization may be legitimate, you run the risk of being lumped in with these other "businesses."

Incentive Type Matters

If you intend to conduct incentivized surveys to boost the response rate, consider offering a gift instead of cash. Doing so tends to keep the respondents' attention on the survey questions without enduring a significant impact to the response rate. For example, a t-shirt or keychain can be an ideal gift for participation. Similarly, allowing respondents to accrue points which can be used to purchase products has the added benefit of boosting sales.

Offering Incentives

The decision of whether your business should conduct paid surveys should depend upon your budget, the type of information you are hoping to gather, and your goals for the data. Plus, you will need to measure any impact that offering incentives (especially cash) has on the validity of the data. While paid surveys can boost response rates, they are not appropriate for every circumstance.