Improving Motivation in Survey Participation by Question Reordering

Abstract

We organized an experiment to show that survey participants take part more when the questionnaires started with less aggressive questions. In our earlier work, we used Bayesian probability and graph algorithms to find relative values of each personal attribute. Using that valuation, we created two sets of the questionnaire each differs in question order and ask 33 personal attributes from participants. The first set of the questionnaire ordered from personal attributes with high valuations such as passport number, driving license number, last name, and monthly income to personal attributes with low valuations such as nationality, gender and office country. On the other hand, the second set of questionnaire ordered from those with low valuations to those with higher valuations. As a result, the number of participants who received the second set of the questionnaire and agrees to submit some information is 70% more than those who received the first set of the questionnaire. Moreover, the second set of participants spend much less time in filling the questionnaire but provides 2.7% more information on average.