PAID FEATURE: Response Quality is available to customers on some paid plans in the US Data Center.
Response Quality uses machine learning to scan your survey results and flag poor-quality responses. For example, if a survey-taker fills a comment box with gibberish, or answers option A on every question, we’ll flag the response so you can focus on high-quality survey data.
To view Response Quality status, the survey needs to be in English, have more than 50 responses, and the response status must be complete. Survey responses collected before March 2nd, 2020 can’t be reviewed for quality.
When you buy responses with SurveyMonkey Audience, response quality is handled differently.
To turn Response Quality on:
If your survey is still collecting responses, we’ll automatically rescan new responses for quality about every 24 hours.
Once your responses are scanned, you can scroll through Individual Responses to find responses flagged as Poor Quality.
Our machine learning models are trained to look for several different types of poor-quality survey responses:
| Flag Type | Description |
| Profanity | The survey response includes a curse word. |
| Straight-lining | Multiple questions have been quickly responded to with the same answer option. For example, the respondent chose option B for every question. |
| Matrix pattern | The respondent answered a matrix question in a pattern. For example, the respondent chose option A for row 1, option B for row 2, option A for row 3, and so on. |
| Speeding | The respondent spent less time on a page than expected. We use a typical reading speed to calculate the average time a respondent should spend on a page. |
| Gibberish | The response includes a text response primarily made of nonsensical words, like "asdfjkl". |
| Length | The response is significantly shorter than other responses. |
| Not a full word | The response includes a 1-character answer that's not a word. |
| Copy-pasted answer | The response matches the question text. |
When you export a CSV, XLS or SPSS file, your flagged responses will appear in a separate file. Your Response Quality file will show the respondent ID and flag types for responses identified as poor.
You can also use the Response Quality filter to view responses marked as poor quality.
Beta! When buying SurveyMonkey responses via SurveyMonkey Audience, we automatically detect, delete, and replace flagged poor-quality responses with new complete responses.
If you’re a Contribute or Rewards respondent and your complete response is flagged as poor-quality, you aren’t able to collect a reward or earn credits for taking the survey.