Questionnaire respondents can be greatly motivated to fill questionnaires by means of small incentives, and these are worth considering during the survey design and planning process.

Incentivising your audience can make a big difference in boosting their motivation to participate in online surveys, but the rewards that can be offered to a questionnaire respondent do not just include monetary ones. Popular respondent incentives offered can also comprise of gifts, or in-kind incentives.

Respondent incentives matter for questionnaire respondents. But they also contribute for a significant financial difference for companies conducting questionnaires to establish customer’s opinions. The opinion of each questionnaire respondent matters and it is important to ensure a high response rate.

When incentives come in to work and motivate more respondents, they lead to higher response rates in smaller amounts of time. In the austere economic conditions for businesses nowadays, that makes a huge difference having in mind the declining budgets for the conduct of questionnaires.

Sometimes the question is raised of whether incentives can lead to potential bias, owing to the attitude to incentives offered to questionnaire respondents. Furthermore, it is pointed out that the complexity of conducting questionnaires and reaching a questionnaire respondent is increasing.

There have been changes in living patterns, with single parent households, multiple residences, etc. In addition, there have been a number of measures to enhance security and privacy, including security systems, etc. Such societal changes have impeded the conduct of surveys by means of questionnaires.

But the changes taking place in society have urged survey practitioners to develop such improvements for enhancing the motivation in questionnaire respondents as different incentives for taking them.

To provide each questionnaire respondent with an incentive, survey designers should allocate enough resources to the various components of the specific online questionnaire. The types of respondent incentives for questionnaire respondents can include on-the-spot rewards to opportunities for each questionnaire respondent to participate in prize draws.