Time to Complete a Decomposed Versus a Condensed Survey Question

When developing a web questionnaire, respondent burden is a major concern. It may be tempting to condense multiple questions into a single grid or question to reduce the number of screens shown to the respondent. However, as time spent answering a survey question varies by the question’s complexity and the cognitive burden placed on the respondent, condensed questions may not actually save time in some circumstances. Using a question about which children in the household eat what school-provided meals, this experiment aims to test if more screens do take more time, even if the questions being asked are simpler to answer when kept separate. The decomposed version asks which children eat school-provided meals and then shows a simple grid listing only the relevant children and the two possible meals. The time to answer this series is compared to the time to answer a comparable “condensed” survey item which uses a single grid to list the children, school meals, and “No meals”. Findings indicate that the decomposed version appears to be faster, but this is partially due to the number of households with no children who eat school-provided meals. In this case, the first question of the decomposed version is significantly faster than the condensed question. However, the condensed question is significantly faster for respondents with at least one child eating a school meal. Comparing these two situations, the time saved in the decomposed version is greater than the time saved in the condensed version, leading to the overall efficiency of the decomposed question.