Decision fatigue and survey design, 2017 to 2020

Created by J. K. Dru

This work traces the evolution of the DVS census over the past four years. Inspired by Prachi Tank's elegant use of Google Sheets to visualize 2019 survey engagement, it adapts her approach to depict how the 2020 census compares to its three predecessors in survey setup and question-skip rates.

Multi-year data reinforces two hypotheses about how to reduce respondents' decision fatigue relative to: (1) how questions are organized (early vs. late in sequence, section lengths) and (2) whether answer choices are "open" (free input) or "closed" (preset list).

An intriguing new factor is the 2020 survey's "choose your own adventure" approach of presenting "respondents [with] different sets of questions tailored to their roles".

A future iteration will identify how using these spreadsheets as a data map in relation to DVS gallery models might facilitate further exploration of this data trove.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ibi3WbJpqeH71QhnL0zOhwY9J22gM0mikyJ4KFDCZdE/edit#gid=29502441