In my online survey should I enforce all questions require an answer?

• Yes
• No

What if I’ve not planned for your answer? Do you:

• Pick Yes – I mean sometimes it’s yes
• Pick No – because sometimes it’s no
• Pick any answer
• Abandon the survey

Most of the time people answer every question in front of them anyway.

If many responses are consistently missing the same question(s) then there might be an issue with the question (e.g. wording, placement, presentation, technical issue).

Enforcing answers on questions can be useful – and essential – when the answer controls which questions to display next or skip. If you have a grid of questions, it can be helpful to highlight when you missed one. But maybe you don’t know / have no experience / don’t want to answer that question? How do you continue?

Don’t enforce (all) survey questions because you can. Use compulsory questions to help your respondents complete the survey.

Planning a survey?

If you need some help, talk to Surveylab.