Determining the pay rate for survey responses is a key decision, which requires taking several factors into account. In Answeo we grant our users full control over their expenses as well as the ability to valuate survey responses on their own. Nevertheless, our platform operates under free market rules and as such, we must keep in mind that the pay rate we offer will affect the demand for our survey. In order to make our researchers’ jobs easier, in this article we gathered some tips for anyone struggling to choose a response pay rate that’s just right.
Why Offering a Fair Pay Rate Is Worth It
As we already mentioned above, Answeo operates under free market rules. This means that the more we pay, the higher the chances that our survey will attract many respondents. This effect is further intensified by the fact that in Answeo surveys are displayed to respondents in order of profitability. Setting a fair pay rate guarantees a much faster response collection. Increased demand, however, is only one of the many benefits of setting a generous pay rate. Fair pay rates show your respondents that you value their effort and motivate them to give your survey the attention it deserves.
How to Determine the Pay Rate
What constitutes a fair pay rate? Unfortunately, there is no universal answer – how much we should pay largely depends on many different factors. In that case – what should we take into account when making this decision?
First of all, we should ask ourselves some questions about our survey:
- What is the average response completion time?
- How complicated is our questionnaire?
- How large is the pool of potential respondents calculated by Answeo?
- How many qualifying questions did we set?
If responding to our survey requires a lot of time and effort, we should offer a pay rate that corresponds to this. Moreover, it is important to keep the supply of survey respondents in mind – if we selected relatively restrictive demographic traits or set multiple qualifying questions, the pay rate should be attractive enough to catch the eye of a wide group of respondents.
In addition, it is always good to have a general sense of the income levels in the respondents’ country – this knowledge will help us determine a pay rate that will attract the respondent and make them feel sufficiently rewarded for their effort.
Further Tips
We invite all users interested in carrying out their own survey research on our platform to read one of our previous articles, which focuses on this area. Furthermore we also recommend taking a look at our Guide to Survey Research, which contains valuable tips for anyone just starting out with Answeo.
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