SurveyMonkey

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.

Response Quality isn't available when:

  • Your survey end page redirects to a third party panel.
  • Your data is stored in the Canada or European Union data centers.
  • A response is incomplete. Response Quality will still work with other complete responses in your survey.

When you buy responses with SurveyMonkey Audience, response quality is handled differently.

To turn Response Quality on:

  1. Go to the Analyze Results section of your survey.
  2. Select the gear icon from the top toolbar.
  3. Toggle on the Response Quality option. It may take a few minutes to scan your survey responses.
    • If this is your first time using Response Quality, you'll see a confirmation message. Select Continue to enable the feature.

Teams and Enterprise plans: If Response Quality is blocked, your primary admin may have turned off access. Ask your admin for access to use this feature.

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.

  • If you agree that the response is poor-quality and want to remove it from your results, you can click Delete. This is permanent and cannot be undone.
  • If you think that we’ve incorrectly flagged a response, click Remove flag to clear the flag and flag type. This also helps improve flagging accuracy in the future.

Response Quality analysis responses from all open-ended questions in your survey. If you turn it off, quality flags will be removed from any text responses in your survey.

To turn off Response Quality:

  1. Go to the Analyze Results section of your survey.
  2. Select the gear icon in the toolbar.
  3. Toggle off the Response Quality option.

Our machine learning models are trained to look for several different types of poor-quality survey responses:

Flag TypeDescription
ProfanityThe survey response includes a curse word.
Straight-liningMultiple questions have been quickly responded to with the same answer option. For example, the respondent chose option B for every question.
Matrix patternThe 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.
SpeedingThe 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.
GibberishThe response includes a text response primarily made of nonsensical words, like "asdfjkl".
LengthThe response is significantly shorter than other responses.
Not a full wordThe response includes a 1-character answer that's not a word.
Copy-pasted answerThe 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.