I'm using the excellent SkeletonQuest theme but I'm wondering if there's a way to allow a respondent to complete a survey without needing to scroll down the page to see new questions and new response options... the idea being that if all questions/groups/subquestions etc. all start from the same point on the page and the respondent only needs to move their mouse to click each answer, response rates will go up and people will complete the survey in less time.

I was thinking that questions might transition via some sort of fade effect or they might 'fly in' from the right hand side etc. etc. basically, whatever is least distracting for people and makes it easiest to complete the survey...

Does anyone have any thoughts or recommendations?

Hi, you may avoid at least some scrolling by setting the presentation format to "question by question" (survey settings). The idea of transition seems attractive but I think that this cannot go automatically, i.e. respondent should control when he/she is ready to go to the next screen - for example in the case of multiple response questions or just to avoid mistakes. So some kind of "Continue" button or similar feature is required. Regards
elisa

Thanks Elisa, I'd forgotten about Question by Question which I guess is half of the solution but then people need to click 'Next' every time which is also very frustrating.

Is there any way to auto-forward once an answer has been selected? GIven the nature of the survey, there's no benefit in people 'reviewing' their answers, the first response is the best in this situation.

I wonder if this is a LimeSurvey determined option, or if this can be adjusted via a theme?

maybe a start here

I don't think that clicking next is that frustrating. Frustrating are questionnaires that are too long and badly written. In my experience dropouts usually come from boring questionnaires or questions that seem irrelevant to the respondent, rather than having to click next or scrolling.

holch wrote: Frustrating are questionnaires that are too long and badly written. In my experience dropouts usually come from boring questionnaires or questions that seem irrelevant to the respondent, rather than having to click next or scrolling.

I take your point. Right now I'm getting about a 10% conversion rate from people coming in from cold via the web which is pretty good but given the survey structure, not having to click next might just bump that figure up a little....

For cold recruitment via web 10% is actually a very good conversion rate, if I might say so.

What I found over the years, that long item batteries (e.g. matrix/array questions) and open ended questions are the ones that cause more drop outs. Usually the most dropouts can bee seen among the first 2-3 screens, which is obvious as all those that were just curious will leave the questionnaire at that point.

You might up the conversion rate slighly with people not having to click next, but this works only for single answer questions anyway. All other question types require a click, because Limesurvey can't know when they finished their multiple answer question or their open-ended question for example.

Have a look at the questions where most respondents drop out. You might find some additional solutions that are even more effective than the automatic forward from Ben's link.

holch wrote: For cold recruitment via web 10% is actually a very good conversion rate, if I might say so.

What I found over the years, that long item batteries (e.g. matrix/array questions) and open ended questions are the ones that cause more drop outs. Usually the most dropouts can bee seen among the first 2-3 screens, which is obvious as all those that were just curious will leave the questionnaire at that point.

Having removed more dud/partial responses, the rate is now just over 6% which is still pretty good...

You're right, the long array which is the substance of the survey does create a lot of drop-outs but it's fine for now.

It might be that with a re-design, the array can be replaced with something from the Single Choice question options and if the survey automatically advances once a respondent clicks a radio button, this might well be the solution but I need to experiment with this first!

6% is still good.

If you can splitt up the array into two shorter array questions it sometimes helps.

Thanks Holch, I'll see what I can come up with...