Qualtrics Blog

Many researchers have struggled with the issue of how to measure service quality.  Perhaps the most widely used measure is based on a set of five dimensions which have been consistently ranked by customers to be most important for service quality, regardless of service industry. These dimensions defined by the SERVQUAL measurement instrument are as follows:

Tangibles: appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication materials;

Reliability: ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately;

Responsiveness: willingness to help customers and provide prompt service;

Assurance: knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence; and

Empathy: the caring, individualized attention the firm provides its customers.

These five SERVQUAL dimensions are used to measure the gap between customers' expectation for excellence and their perception of actual service delivered. The SERVQUAL instrument, when applied over time, helps service providers understand both customer expectations, perceptions of specific services, and areas of needed quality improvements. SERVQUAL has been used in many ways, such as identifying specific service elements requiring improvement, and targeting training opportunities for service staff. Proper development of items used in the SERVQUAL instrument provides rich item-level information that leads to practical implications for a service manager.

The service quality dimensions evaluated by SERVQUAL should be adjusted for optimal performance in different industry, public and private sector applications. SERVQUAL scores are highly reliable, but when used in different industries may fail to produce a clear delineation of the five basic dimensions.Other measures, such as the Six Sigma model should be considered for applicability in quantifying the gap between service expectations and perceptions.

Increasing Survey Response Rates

Survey response rates are a function of the:

(1) Clarity of instructions, purpose and questions
(2) Motivation of the respondent to respond
(3) Interest of the respondent in the survey
(4) Survey length and ease of completing the survey
(5) Incentives and rewards for completion

Using Exchange and Incentives to Increase Online Survey Response Rates

The process of using survey techniques to obtain information from potential respondents can be viewed as a special case of social exchange. Very simply, social exchange theory asserts that the actions of individuals are motivated by the return (or rewards) these actions are expected to, or usually do, bring from others.

Whether a given behavior occurs is a function of the perceived costs of completing a survey and the rewards (not necessarily monetary) one expects to receive as a result of completing the survey.

Under this theory, survey response rate is increased by meeting three conditions:

1. The costs for survey response must be minimized.

2. The rewards for survey response must be maximized.

3. There must be a belief by potential respondents that such rewards will, in fact, be provided.

Larger incentives for survey completion will generally produce larger response rates. These incentives are often offered in the form of random drawings or incentives to the first 100 respondents to the survey. Respondents generally do not understand the probabilities of winning and like the case of lotteries, respond better to the change of a very attractive incentive. Incentives distributed as drawings allow the researcher to control the costs of the survey and spread the budgeted amount across a large number of respondents.

Using Cognitive Dissonance to Increase Online Survey Response Rates

Cognitive dissonance theory when applied to increasing survey response, integrates a broad range of research efforts on inducement techniques for survey response. As used to explain survey response, the theory postulates that reducing dissonance is an important component of the “respond/not respond” decision by potential survey respondents.

The process is triggered by receipt of a questionnaire and cover letter asking for participation. Assuming that failure to respond might be inconsistent with a person’s self-perception of being a helpful person, or perhaps at least one who honors reasonable requests, failure to respond will produce a state of dissonance that the potential respondent seeks to reduce by becoming a survey respondent.

Using Self-Perception to Increase Online Survey Response Rates

Self-perception theory asserts that people infer attitudes and knowledge of themselves through interpretations made about the causes of their behavior.

Interpretations are made on the basis of self-observation. To the extent that a person’s decision to respond to a survey is attributed to internal causes and is not perceived as due to circumstantial pressures, a positive attitude toward survey response develops.

These attitudes (self-perception) then affect subsequent behavior. The self-perception paradigm has been extended to the broad issue of online survey response. To increase the precision of this paradigm, the concepts of salience (importance of behaviors one has attended to), favorability (the affect or feeling generated by a given behavioral experience), and availability (information in memory) are utilized.

In addition, researchers should create labels (i.e., helpful, kind, generous) to enhance the effects of online survey response. Labeling involves assisting the prospective respondents to classify themselves based on their behavior such that they will act in a manner consistent with the characterization.

Self-perception would predict that using an invitation letter to label behavior as “helpful” would cause that person to view himself or herself as the kind of person who engages in such behavior; therefore, the likelihood of later label consistent behavior is increased.

When creating a survey, the structure and flow of topics, sequencing of questions, and the writing style are very important… and can be used by the researcher to make the questionnaire friendlier to the respondent.

The "funnel" technique. Start with broad, general interest questions that are easy for the respondent to answer. These questions serve to warm up the respondent and get them involved in the survey. In the middle, place the most difficult questions, those that take time to think about, and those that are of less general interest. At the end, we again place general questions that are easier to answer and of broad interest and application. Typically, these last questions include demographic and other classification questions.

When building a survey that needs to be a “little more interesting”, you might try inserting "ringer or throw away" questions to increase interest and willingness to respond. These questions are about hot topics of the day and often have little to do with the survey. While these questions will definitely spice up a boring survey, they require valuable space that could be devoted to the main topic of interest. Use this type of question with caution.

Keep Your Survey Short. Questionnaires should be kept short and to the point. Most long surveys are not completed. A quick look at a survey containing page after page of boring questions produces a response of "there is no way I'm going to complete this thing". If a questionnaire is long, the person must either be very interested in the topic, a true bleeding heart, an employee, or paid for their time. Internet surveys have some advantage because the respondent will often not see all of the survey at once. However if your survey sends them to page after page of questions, your response rate will drop off dramatically.

How long is too long? The general rule of thumb is to keep the survey short, typically less than five to ten minutes. At six questions per minute, and depending on the question difficulty, you are limited to about 30-40 questions. When building a survey, remember that one open end text question counts for three multiple choice questions, depending of course on the difficulty of the question. While only a rule of thumb, this formula will accurately predict the limits of your survey.

Question Sequence When Building A Survey

The main tools used in building a branching survey are skip patterns, branching and randomization.

A survey that allows different respondents to receive a different set of questions may be a result of the following:

Simple skip patterns: The respondent answered one question in a specific way and therefore skips to a designated question further down the survey.

Branching: A compound list of conditions is met (they answered several and met several different conditions) and were sent to a designated question further down the survey, or were only presented with a given question if conditions based on previous answers were met.

Blocking: A set of questions are defined as a block and based on conditions met, the block is presented.

Randomization: Used to prevent order bias in presentation of

* The order of question answers
* The order of questions within blocks
* The order of blocks of questions
* The random selection of a subset of questions with a block of questions

For example, a patron of a restaurant may be asked to evaluate the “overall quality of service received during their visit”.

If they respond that they are "very or extremely satisfied", we want to branch to ask the question "What was it about this visit that made it so enjoyable to you?"

However, if they indicate that the visit was less than satisfactory, we want to ask the question "What could have been done to make your visit more enjoyable?"

Branching is accomplished using Boolean logic statements of the form:

If (question # ) (state condition: <, = , >, <=, >=, not equal) (value), then (action: skip forward to the target question )
For example, If the answer on question 3 equals 1, then skip to question 5, Otherwise continue to question 4.

Survey branching must be carefully charted out. For simplicity, make sure all of your questions are in their final order before the branching pattern is implemented. It is best to flowchart questions and order questions so that you can visually see where your branching occurs and so that you will avoid logic and branching errors.

Question Sequence and Branching:

Conditional Branching occurs only if the condition is met. An example of conditional branching is the statement:
"If the answer to question (3) is greater than 2, then Branch to Question (5)"

Compound Conditional Branching (compound branching means that branching is based on multiple answers, i.e., if question 3 is greater than 2 and question 1 is greater than 1). This option can be specified as a single instruction, or can be developed through multiple questions are included in the instruction set that defines the branching operations.

A branching example using a series of simple conditional branches might appear as follows:

"Branch to Question (5) only if: " the answer to Question (3) is, as specified by the relational operator, greater than or equal to (4)"
AND a previous question had a separate branch instruction that directed the respondent to Question 5

Unconditional Branching occurs as a direct statement with no conditions. For example, "Branch to question 5" is an unconditional statement. Unconditional statements can be inserted for text questions or at the end of a branch path to bring the respondent to a specific point in the main survey.

Unconditional branching is the simplest form of branching, but can be used as a conditional branch if implemented correctly. To accomplish this, use unconditional branches for each answer of each question. As example, we might want to skip to question 15 if the respondent is a renter, but answer question 14 for owners.

Caveats about Building Branching Surveys:
Branching creates what are called "Opportunities for Disruption" meaning that the respondent often justifies discontinuing of the survey when a whole new page of questions appears. One recent study resulted in a 25% respondent discontinuation when the survey branched to a page with a large number of questions on it. Respondent termination occurs most often when the survey task continues beyond a reasonable time, number of pages, questions, or when they are not committed to the survey (or group sponsoring the survey).