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Use Multiple Questions per Page of a Web Survey

Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Mon, Oct 12, 2009

I'm frequently asked whether it is better to show a single question per page or to show multiple questions per page. My advice has been to group questions together logically on a single page, using different pages to change topics.

Since that advice was intuitive rather than empirical, I decided to do an experiment. My control was a 5-page, 9-question questionnaire where some pages had one question and some pages had two or three. My experiment took the same version of the questionnaire but added a page break after the introduction and placed one question per page: this made it twice the length, at 10 pages. It was the exact same questionnaire, differing only in pagination. (For the record, both versions displayed a progress bar indicating how far the respondent was through the survey.)

After only 44 survey starts, the abandonment rate had jumped from 5% across 79 starts of my 5-page survey to 25% for its 10-page equivalent. I cut the experiment short due to the significant impact the additional pages had on abandonment.
Broadening my analysis to include some surveys that differed from one another in other ways, I found an 18% abandonment rate for several 10-page surveys with one question per page vs. an abandonment rate of 3% for two surveys with logical groupings of questions.

Results of question-per-page research

Clearly, the need to click the Next button and wait for a new page of the survey to load represents enough additional effort to respondents that it discourages them from completing a survey.

Despite the small sample sizes, this is not an experiment I will be repeating anytime soon! When writing your own questionnaires, to maximize completion rate, avoid showing one question per page.

Tags: Research on Research

Comments

I am wondering if the multi-question pages required scrolling to get through the questions and to see the "next" button, and I wonder if you think this has anything to do with the decision. Sometimes I have moved a question to a new page because I was concerned the respondent might not realize that they have to scroll down (although it should be pretty intuitive for most). But I still think it looks nicer to have then entire page displayed at once. Any thoughts? Thanks!

Posted @ Monday, October 12, 2009 3:23 PM by Pam Snodgrass

I am surprised at these results. I always try to design surveys so that respondents do not have to scroll down the screen which I always intuitively thought would result in a higher drop out rate.

It should be remembered that questions asked only of part of the total sample should be presented on separate pages so the part of the sample not qualified to answer that question skip round it. There is nothing worse as a respondent than being presented with questions you can't answer.

Also, being able to scroll down to look at subsequent questions may also possibly affect respondents' answers. This is another reason to avoid multiple questions on a single page.

Therefore, there may be a choice to be made between minimising the drop out rate and quality of response. I think quality of response whould win out every time. There is no point in minimising drop out if the quality of response is poor.

Is there any chance of seeing the surveys used in this experiment?

Posted @ Tuesday, October 13, 2009 3:13 AM by Gary Austin

Sorry for not being clear -- since the multiquestion pages only had two or three questions (typically short choose-one questions), no scrolling was needed. I typically prefer to have the entire survey page "above the fold" and visible without scrolling.

Gary, you raise some great additional points. For these tests, every question related to every respondent, so there was no need for skip patterns. I would never remove a programmed skip pattern just to shorten the number of pages the survey took. Unfortunately, I can't share these particular questionnaires.

You raise an interesting point on drop-out rate and quality of response. I'm not sure they are orthogonal to one another. Doesn't a high drop-out rate indicate a likely increase in satisficing near the end of the questionnaire, which would decrease quality of response?

Posted @ Tuesday, October 13, 2009 10:20 AM by Jeffrey Henning

I appreciate your last point Jeffrey, there's certainly plenty to think about here. I think you could argue that those who can be bothered to click on the next button and wait for pages to load are more likely to give considered answers, meaning that the single page survey has a higher quality of response. The extra responses you get from multi-question page surveys may be from people who are more likely to be satisficing from the start of a questionnaire and hence more likely to drop out early on in a single question page survey?

Posted @ Tuesday, October 13, 2009 11:54 AM by Gary Austin

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