Visual design effects in questionnaires
In the context of visual design effects on open-ended questions, I have analyzed differences in response behavior in list-style open-ended questions, i.e., questions asking respondents to name all items (e.g., brands) they know of a specific category, between formats that provide the respondent with one large answer box and those that provide ten small answer boxes (Keusch, 2014). I found that the overall number of brands named, the proportion of low accessibility brands named, and the time that the respondents needed to give an answer to the question were significantly higher if ten small answer boxes were presented. These findings confirmed that respondents utilize cues from the design of the survey instrument in their answer process as proposed by visual design theory.
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