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Effectiveness of progress indicators in web surveys. It's what's up front that counts
Conrad, FG., Couper, MP., Tourangeau, R., Peytchev, A., & Banks, R. (2003). Effectiveness of progress indicators in web surveys. It's what's up front that counts. In ASC 2003: the impact of technology on the survey process: proceedings of the Fourth Association for Survey Computing International Conference, University of Warwick, UK, September 17-19, 2003 (pp. 333-342). Association for Survey Computing.
Web surveys often display information to respondents about how much of the questionnaire they have completed. The assumption seems to be that respondents will be more likely to complete the entire questionnaire if they know how much more effort is required. We report a web survey experiment that explores the effectiveness of such "progress indicators" when progress is calculated at three speeds: initially fast but slower later, initially slow but faster later and constant speed. The feedback presented in the early part of the questionnaire turns out to be what matters most. When initial progress was slow (and presumably discouraging) respondents broke-off at higher rates than their counterparts and when it was fast (and presumably encouraging) they were less likely to break-off on a laborious item in the middle of the questionnaire even though the rate of their progress had slowed substantially. Encouraging news at the outset led those who completed the questionnaire to rate it as more interesting and to have taken fewer minutes than did initial discouraging news.
