Customer loginUsing slider controls in electronic surveys
April 2008
Peter Wills, CEO Snap Surveys
At the ASC International conference last autumn, Nicola Stanley of Silver Dialogue Ltd (a long established Snap user) and Steve Jenkins of Snap Surveys presented a paper on the use of slider controls in web surveys. Their paper generated a lot of interest at the conference and we felt that it would be useful to share the details with you. For those of you wishing to read the full text of the paper, we’ve added a PDF link at the end of this summary, as well as a link enabling you to complete the questionnaire referenced in their paper.
Many of today’s web surveys do have some level of routing, text-substitution and answer masking, but in appearance terms, the majority of them are published as simply electronic versions of a paper questionnaire. The research for this paper was to challenge the conventional approach and determine whether slider controls can add value to a web survey.
Nicola and Steve’s approach was to carry out a web based survey with half of the respondents using a traditional online questionnaire with no slider controls and the other half using the same questions but with slider controls replacing the traditional radio buttons and check boxes. The survey was on environmental responsibility and the two samples were selected from an internet consumer panel of 600 respondents, 300 being asked to complete a standard web survey and the other 300 being asked to complete the survey with slider controls.
The areas that they investigated in the research were:
- Engagement - measuring the motivation of respondents to interact with the questionnaire.
- Usability – how easy the controls were to operate.
- Accuracy – would the results be less accurate than conventional web surveys?
Engagement
One hypothesis of the research was that younger age groups would find a survey with slider controls more appealing, and surprisingly this was not found to be the case, and they appeared to be most appealing to the 25-34 age group.
A criticism of using graphical controls in a web survey has always been that the survey would take longer to complete. In fact, the research found that it only took 10% longer to complete a survey with sliders that with conventional radio buttons. The sample of respondents with the standard web surveys did not need any explanatory notes as they all would have been comfortable with radio buttons and check boxes. The sample of respondents with the survey containing sliders did receive some explanatory notes and this may have explained some of the increases found.
Very positive comments were reported for the graphical survey in terms of enjoyment and interest and it can well be argued that if respondents feel more involved in the survey, then their replies may well be more accurate.
Usability
Not surprisingly, the research found that the standard survey was both faster to load and easier to complete. However, the differences were not significant, with the standard survey scoring 91% for ease of response against 89% for the survey with sliders.
One of the sliders that caused a little confusion was a dual slider bar, asking the percentage of waste recycled as opposed to being put in the refuse bin. The traditional approach would be to ask for the percentage of waste being recycled and then subtracting that number from 100 to calculate the percentage being placed in the refuse bin. The graphical approach showed the precise split as the bar was moved from left to right. This type of slider control may need altering before being used again, or may need extra explanation.
Accuracy
The research found when respondents were offered either a 5-point scale on the standard survey or the equivalent in the form of a thermometer on the survey with the slider controls, higher scores were recorded using the sliders than the traditional 5-point scale. Typically, the increase was in the region of 11%. It was suggested that respondents using the thermometer scale were more motivated to using the higher end of the scale, but this might be an area that the researchers could investigate in any future work.
An innovative graphical control was included in the research to simulate perceptual brand mapping. This allowed respondents of the survey with sliders to simply drag-and-drop images from one area of the screen onto a map. Once again, the results were slightly higher than the standard survey with a 10-point radio button scale. There also seemed to be a feeling that every company had to be moved somewhere on the map. Leaving the company icon in the list essentially logged a response of “No Reply” and perhaps this may have needed additional explanation.
Conclusion
The authors of the research were very buoyant with the results of the survey, having found no disadvantages of using slider controls in terms of either completion times for the survey or responses rates.
Caution was expressed that any graphical controls must cater for both “No Reply” situations, as well as “Don’t Know” and that the respondent does need a facility to record such options.
Since slider controls are fairly new to surveys and can appear in numerous guises, the authors were at pains to stress that either the operation of such controls need to be made “obvious”, or appropriate instructions needed to be included with each survey.
The next step…
Nicola and Steve are keen to do further work, both in reducing the potential set-up time of such surveys, as well as generating guidelines for questionnaire designers on the application of these controls.
In the meantime, the developers at Snap Surveys have already taken on board many of the findings of this research and some slider functionality is now available in Snap 9 using the Snap Toolkit / SurveyPlus options.
View the full text of the paper presented to the ASC conference (PDF)
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