Survey Fatigue in Questionnaire Based Research: The Issues and Solutions

Collecting self-reported data through questionnaires and surveys has long been the most commonly used tool in healthcare research.These studies provide important information concerning a population's feelings, experiences, habits, health, and opinions. 1Obtaining correct and accurate data from survey respondents has long been a challenge for researchers. 2Today, there are many studies that use questionnaires as a main tool for collecting data from patients, health care professionals, and other groups.However, people become overwhelmed by the number of surveys and questionnaires they encounter in daily life, and they thus become fatigued. 1,3his type of fatigue is called survey fatigue or respondent fatigue, a phenomenon where individuals become tired and uninterested in answering the questions of surveys, lose their motivation to complete surveys, provide less thoughtful answers to questions, or prematurely terminate participation as a result. 4,5Another form of respondent fatigue can be visible as a respondent skips the questions, leaves text response fields blank, selects the default answers to the questions, or the same option is selected in a series of multiple-choice questions. 4 There are many factors contributing to the survey fatigue.Researchers should recognize that long surveys with extensive follow-up questions, targeting the incorrect participants, poor survey design, asking repetitive questions, providing more open-ended questions, and participating in too many surveys (called over-surveying) could lead to survey fatigue. 4,5urvey fatigue is considered a main limitation of questionnaire-based designs which results in careless responses, suboptimal responses, and decreased survey responsiveness.Moreover, it can damage the results of rigorously designed studies by providing inaccurate answers and causing substandard responses to the questions. 6Finally, these undesirable behaviors can lead