The survey fatigue challenge: understanding young people’s motivation to participate in survey research studies

Abstract: Survey response rates are declining in most developed countries, and Sweden is no exception. Declining response rates are believed to be due to recent social and tech-nological development in society. Young people are the most difficult to recruit. The increase in nonresponse is often explained by a phenomenon called “survey fatigue” – i.e. that people become overwhelmed by the number of surveys they encounter in daily life and thus become fatigued. The purpose of the study was to investigate and understand whether the explanation of “survey fatigue” is true or if there are other reasons for young people to not respond. Furthermore the purpose was to better un-derstand how people in the age cohorts of 16-34 years can be motivated to partici-pate in survey research. To explore the topic, 18 persons were interviewed in a semi-structured setting. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) was used as a theoretical framework for understanding young people’s motivation. To the extent that the find-ings were generalizable, the study confirmed other research within the field, that intrinsic motivation for participating in surveys is the most likely to be consistent and also gives the best survey response quality.