Respondent Fatigue
Respondent fatigue is a well-documented phenomenon that occurs when survey participants become tired of the survey task and the quality of the data they provide begins to deteriorate. It occurs when survey participants' attention and motivation drop toward later sections of a questionnaire. Tired or bored respondents may more often answer "don't know," engage in "straight-line" responding (i.e. choosing answers down the same column on a page), give more perfunctory answers, or give up answering the questionnaire altogether. Thus, the causes for, and consequences of, respondent fatigue, and possible ways of measuring and controlling for it, should be taken into account when deciding on the length of the questionnaire, question ordering, survey design, and interviewer training.
Participating in a survey requires time and effort; respondents ...
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Reader's Guide
Ethical Issues In Survey Research
Measurement - Interviewer
Measurement - Mode
Measurement - Questionnaire
Measurement - Respondent
Measurement - Miscellaneous
Nonresponse - Item-Level
Nonresponse - Outcome Codes And Rates
Nonresponse - Unit-Level
Operations - General
Operations - In-Person Surveys
Operations - Interviewer-Administered Surveys
Operations - Mall Surveys
Operations - Telephone Surveys
Political And Election Polling
Public Opinion
Sampling, Coverage, And Weighting
Survey Industry
Survey Statistics
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