Survey creators sometimes add trap questions (or red herring questions) to their surveys to ensure respondents are thoroughly reading the survey questions and not rushing through the survey or satisficing.
Adding one or two trap questions allows you to filter out respondents who don't correctly answer the trap question. To do this, filter your survey results by question and answer and only show responses from respondents who chose the correct answer choice.
A common trap question is a Multiple Choice question where you ask respondents to select a particular answer choice.
Please select B as your answer choice.
You could also choose to add an incorrect answer choice and filter out respondents who select it.
What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?
To make your trap question even more difficult to spot, you can add it as a row in a Matrix question.
Trap questions are also a common way to identify and control error when purchasing online panels. However, if you're purchasing responses via SurveyMonkey Audience, we feel there is little need for trap questions.
We've tested the quality of SurveyMonkey Audience responses by sending the same survey through SurveyMonkey Audience and several other online panel providers. The validity rate for SurveyMonkey Audience was higher in comparison to other panel providers.