intelligent measurement

People (read: potential clients) often tell me that their publics are fed up filling out online survey, being interview or queried about their opinions. Rubbish I say. People are willing to spend time giving their opinion about a website, service or issues that is important to them.

In a recent online survey of external audiences for an international organisation, 25% of the potential audience responded to the survey. And of those who responded, 44% requested a copy of the results. In an evaluation of an international event, 55% of the participants responded to survey. And of those who responded, 60% requested a copy of the results. 

In the survey for the international organisation, 80% of respondents said that the organisation's website was very important or important for their work. Wouldn't you like to give an opinion on something that important to you? I would.

My experience is that people are willing to participate in research if it is something that is important to them and if they believe something will be done with the results.

In this article on the simply-communicate.com site, the author points out that: 

“In a recent survey of reasons for non-response to employee questionnaires, the biggest driver of non-participation was found to be 'Nothing would happen as a result'".

So people do want to see that their opinion is valued. The fact that such a large percentage of people want to receive the evaluation results indicate that they are interested in the subject in question. In addition, I imagine that people are interested to see if what they think corresponds to the norm - and to judge what the organisation will do as a consequence of the evaluation.

Glenn