Vprašalnik

There are 10 simple ways to reduce the non-response rate:

1. Recruit from a variety of sources. Don't just send invitations via email - post the survey in different online communities (forums, social networks, etc.).

2. Personalise the email invitations. Personalised messages increase the response rate by at least 5%, sometimes even more. So, address invitations to "Ms./Mr. Smith", not just to "Dear Ms./Mr."

3. Keep the email invitation short and simple. In addition to the link to the online survey, don't forget to point out:

• who you are;
• what the survey means for each individual;
• the length of the survey (especially if it is short, but don't be misleading, as respondents are more open to completing longer surveys if they know what to expect);
• the anonymity of the survey.

4. Keep the first page of the survey simple and attractive. Make it motivating for respondents. Do not put instructions on it, as research shows that respondents are reluctant to read long instructions on the first page.

5. However - highlight how you will use the answers. Write this down on the first page. People prefer to give information on the internet if they are familiar with how it will be used. So emphasise anonymity and the confidentiality of the information, or plans to share it with others.

6. Don't forget to send email reminders. After a certain period of time, send a second invitation to people who have not responded to the survey. You can do this by sending a thank you to those who have already responded and encouraging those who have not yet done so. However, it is better not to send more than two reminders and, in particular, to remove the e-mail addresses of those who no longer wish to be contacted.

7. Consider offering incentives - gifts, rewards, etc. Studies show that you don't need big or expensive incentives to increase response rates. Even small gifts can help to increase response rates.

8. Some people simply want to share their opinion. Many people will respond to a survey just because they want to share their opinion, not because of the rewards. So consider making the prize optional - e.g. hold a prize draw.

9. Make strategic use of graphics and other online opportunities. Generally, surveys do not need graphics; they can sometimes even be distracting or influence the answers. In some cases, however, graphics can increase response rates (e.g. a link or picture of the reward, etc.).

10. Publicise the results of the survey. Respondents are interested in the results of the survey and publishing them will help motivate them to complete the survey.

As the questionnaire represents your contact with the respondent, how you design the questions in it is very important. Keep the following in mind:

1. Designing your own questions means more freedom, both in wording and format. However, this raises doubts about objectivity, reliability (to what extent repeated measurement under the same conditions and on the same units will give the same results) and validity (whether we are measuring what we intended to measure in the first place). Many different measurement scales and questionnaires have been developed in order to improve these three components as much as possible. So check if there are already any that look for the information you want (e.g. in a survey library).

2. Do not force respondents to answer (e.g. mandatory questions), but rather check that respondents have provided the information you are looking for. E.g. if you want to know the year of birth, limit the answer field so that only four-digit numbers can be entered. The alert should therefore only remind you that the information provided was incorrect and ask for a correction, but should not prevent you from continuing. The latter may lead respondents to make up answers or even to stop answering the survey.

3. The content of the questions should be simple and easy to understand. This means avoiding jargon, slang and overly technical words. Avoid questions that have more than one dimension.

4. The order of the questions is very important:

• The order should be logical. E.g. questions about events should follow the order of events, questions about the evaluation of an experience should follow questions about the description of that experience, etc.
• Questions relating to the same topic should follow each other. Constantly changing topics reduces the likelihood that answers will be well thought out. If the questions are organised by topic, the respondent can focus on only one topic at a time.
• The topics (and questions) should be ordered from those that are most important to the respondent to those that are least important to the respondent. Research shows that surveys that address topics that are more important to respondents have higher response rates.
• Sensitive (difficult) questions should be more towards the end, as you do not want the respondent to stop completing the questionnaire at the beginning because of these questions.
• Demographic questions are usually at the end of the questionnaire.
• Questions with similar parts should be together - e.g. questions with the same scale should be placed together. In this way, the cognitive burden on the respondent is reduced.

5. The first question should be suitable for everyone (the only exception is when the first question is to determine the "suitability" of the respondent), namely:

• Keep it simple so that respondents can read it, understand it and answer it in a few seconds. This is not the place for long questions with many possible answers or for open questions.
• Make it interesting, as this increases the likelihood that the respondent will participate in the survey.

6. The measurement scales should be consistent throughout the survey. If you have used a scale from 1 to 5, this should be the case throughout the survey. The naming of the highest and lowest values should also be consistent (e.g. 1 should be the lowest and 5 the highest everywhere, or vice versa).

7. Care should be taken when drafting the first and last pages of the questionnaire. The first page should primarily motivate the respondents, so do not put instructions on it. The last page should be simple; it usually includes a thank you.

8. Determine which question type is best for each question.

9. If there are many questions in the survey, it should also have several pages, as too much scrolling is not desirable. It is also not advisable to have only one question per page, as this increases the time it takes to complete the survey and also increases the chance that respondents will stop answering.

10. Use conditions to branch the survey when necessary. Never include text in the survey to the effect of "If you answered 'yes' to Q1, then answer Q2, otherwise go directly to Q3". Conditions are only available for users of the 2KA and 3KA packages for individuals, and for users of the business packages for groups.

11. Check that you have included all possible answers for the closed question types. If you are not sure, use the "other" option.

Some of the functionalities described are only available for users of the 2KA and 3KA packages for individuals, and for users of the business packages for groups.

The Loop functionality allows you to repeat a question based on the answers to a previous question. This can also be done with conditions, but it would be considerably more complicated and time-consuming.

For example: you want to know which fruit the respondent has ever eaten (e.g. Q1) and how much they like to eat it (e.g. Q2). If they select more than one option in (Q1), you should ask them that follow up question for each fruit selected in (Q2). Once you have created both questions in the ‘EDIT’ – ‘Questionnaire’ tab, the procedure for the loop is as follows:

• In the set of all question types, under 'Advanced options', click on 'Loop'. This adds a loop to the questionnaire, which is marked 'LOOP' and 'ENDLOOP' at the beginning and end of the loop.
• In the 'Loop for' dropdown, you select the first question (Q1), i.e. which fruit the respondent has ever eaten.
• 1KA selects all possible answers by default, which means that the loop will be valid for all options of the question, if of course the respondent chooses them. In this case, leave it as it is.
• On the right hand side of the loop settings window you can click on the 'Advanced' link where additional options are available. Here, for each possible answer to Q1, you can set in which cases the question will also appear in the loop: when the options are selected, when the options are not selected, always or never. In this case, leave the default option 'Selected' everywhere.
• At the bottom of the loop window, you can also set a maximum number of total repetitions; so the loop does not have to be repeated for every answer. In this case, we leave the default option 'All'.
• In the right side menu 'Loop settings', click on the 'Close' button.
• Then move the second question (Q2) into the loop (before the 'ENDLOOP' label).
• The loop is now correctly set.

For the text of question Q2, you can use the datapiping function to pass the value that the respondent has selected in question Q1 (e.g. 'How do you like to eat #Q1#?'). In this case, 'How do you like to eat kiwifruit' will be displayed if the respondent selected this option in the first question.

The functionality is available for users of the 3KA package for individuals, and for users of the business packages for groups.

In the 'EDIT' – 'Questionnaire' tab, you can insert a video in the survey in two ways:

A. Embed code:

• While editing the question, first open the advanced editor - click on the letter 'A'.
• Then click on the HTML - 'Source code' icon to open the HTML code editor.
• A new HTML code editing window opens, where you insert the 'embed' code of the video (e.g. YouTube) and confirm your changes.
• This way, the video is embedded in the text of the question via the embed function and can be played by respondents when they view the survey.
• It is very important that the video you want to embed is located at a https address. For example, if you embed a YouTube video with an http address instead of https, the video will not be displayed in newer browsers when completing the survey, as they do not allow the display of unprotected content within a website that uses the https standard.

B. Normal file upload

• You can upload a video as a file to the 1KA server.
• While editing the question, first open the advanced editor - click on the letter 'A'.
• Highlight the desired text with the mouse and click on the add link icon. In the window that opens, select 'Choose FIle' to upload the video file.
• Respondents can then download the file containing the video to their computer and watch the video in a local video player.

In the case of a large number of questions (more than 30), it is appropriate to structure the questionnaire in blocks to increase clarity and structure. 1KA therefore reminds the user of this option whenever a questionnaire reaches 30 questions.

Blocks are added using the B icon in the left side menu of the 'EDIT' - 'Questionnaire' tab:

1. First, click on the add block icon and drag it in front of the first question you want to include in the block.
2. Then, click and drag the 'ENDBLOCK' tag to position it after the last question you want to have in that block.

An example of a questionnaire structured into blocks can be found in the public questionnaire library (section '1KA Surveys and Questions', 'Conditions and Filters', 'Structuring Into blocks'). In practice, you can only see an example of a block in the 'EDIT' - 'Questionnaire'tab, for which you need to be logged in. The structuring of questions in blocks is even more clearly visible if you use the 'Collapsed view' option, which is located in the menu above the questionnaire.

Displaying blocks as tabs

When editing blocks, you have the option to select the 'Block as a tab' display. If this is selected, respondents can scroll through the questionnaire as usual (by clicking on Next page) or through the blocks or tabs that are always displayed above all questions. Clicking on a tab or block will only show you the questions in the selected tab.
Similarly, when editing the questionnaire, the questions in the blocks will be displayed in the same way, where if you select 'ALL', the questions are displayed normally, but you can also scroll through the questions via the tabs, which are always displayed above all the questions.

Example of survey with blocks in the form of tabs>>

Using blocks to display a condensed sequence of (hierarchical) questions

The layout of questions in a block is set to 'standard' by default. In this case, the questions are sequenced vertically one after the other. In some cases, when you want to display several questions in a horizontal row, you can use the horizontal layout instead. In the case of a horizontal layout, the questions are narrowed and displayed in columns. Each question is in its own column, so they are placed horizontally next to each other.

The horizontal layout is especially useful for sequential filtering of questions (drill-down), that open up based on the if condition.

Randomizing questions in a block

In the block settings, we have the option to randomize the questions in a block, which means that the questions in that block are displayed to the respondent randomly. In this case, we have the additional possibility of specifying the number of questions displayed. We can set to show all questions to the respondents or only a part of them, e.g. randomly 5 questions from a block of 10 questions.

Example: we have a quiz with 100 questions, and we want to display 10 questions randomly to each respondent.

1. Add all the questions from the 'Add Question' menu on the left
2. Add a block in front of the first question you want to place in the block.
3. Drag the 'ENDBLOCK' tag after the last question in the block.
4. Click on edit block and under 'Randomize block content' select 'Questions'
5. Under 'Number of displayed questions', select '10'.

The respondent will be shown 10 questions at random from the block of 100 questions.

Random sorting of several different blocks

In case the survey consists of a large number of blocks, we have the possibility to randomise several different blocks in the block settings.

Example: we have a survey with three different blocks that we want to be displayed randomly to the respondents.

1. Add all the questions from the 'Add Question' menu on the left
2. Add a block in front of the first question you want to place in the block.
3. Drag the 'ENDBLOCK' tag after the last question in the block.
4. Do this for all individual blocks before putting all the created blocks in a new (main) block
5. Click on edit block and under 'Randomize block content' select 'Blocks'

The randomization of questions, answers and blocks is also recorded as paradata in the 'DATA' - 'Browse' tab, where it is recorded for each respondent in what order the blocks, answers or questions were shown to them.

Note: If any of the settings described above (horizontal layout of questions, random sorting of questions, displaying the block as a tab) are activated, the block must not contain any page breaks.

The functionality is available for users of the 2KA and 3KA packages for individuals, and for users of the business packages for groups.

Transfering values from the answer of one question into the text of another question

• A respondent’s answer from a previous question (i.e. Q1) can be transferred to a subsequent question (i.e. Q2) with the #Q1# command.
• Example: Question Q1contains the field “Name”, which we wish to include in question Q2. Into the text of Q2, we enter: “Hello, #Q1#, we would like to know…”
• A respondent that entered “Peter” into Q1 will see the following text: “Hello, Peter, we would like to know…”

Transfering values from the answer of one question into the text of an asnwer of another question

• A respondent’s answer from a previous question (i.e. Q1) can be transferred into the text of answers of a subsequent question (i.e. Q2) with the same #Q1# command.

For better insight, please see the example of data piping in the library.

The 1KA tool allows you to split your survey into two or more parts. This can be done in the 'EDIT' – 'Questionnaire' tab by setting conditions for each part of the survey and selecting 'Random groups' as the condition variable from the first dropdown list. Then choose the total number of different groups from the second dropdown list, and finally assign which group will see the contents of the IF condition in the third dropdown list.

Place the questions that belong to each of the selected groups in their respective IF conditions. Some questions may remain the same for all groups: such questions should not be moved inside any of these conditions.

The random group (sub-sample) is determined on the basis of the respondent's serial number and is applicable to the entire questionnaire process. For example, if four random subsamples are defined for two different questions, the first respondent in both conditions belongs to random subsample 1, the second respondent again in both conditions to subsample 2, and so on.

The functionality is available for users of the 2KA and 3KA packages for individuals, and for users of the business packages for groups.