At The Improve Group, we work with surveys and survey data nearly every day. Surveys are a great method for reaching a large audience in a cost-effective manner, but they also have their drawbacks. The people you’re interested in reaching are not always motivated to take the survey and return it back to you.

In our work with the Performing Arts Workshop, we have achieved some high response rates using an incentive to motivate teachers and parents to return surveys and consent forms. In order for students to participate in our Performing Arts Workshop evaluation, their parents must first give consent. Last year, we found that many parents had not returned consent forms. We didn’t know if these parents truly did not want their child to participate in the evaluation or if they simply forgot to return the form. This year, we wanted to decrease the number of parents who forgot to return forms, so we enlisted the help of the teachers and offered an incentive for their help.

We consulted with teachers that were involved in last year’s evaluation and asked them suggestions for an incentive for their classrooms that would help motivate parents to return forms. Based on their advice, we are offering teachers with high response rates a $100 gift card to be used in the classroom for healthy snacks or other classroom supplies. This incentive has been highly successful so far; two weeks before the surveys are due back to us, we’ve already had three packets returned with 100% response rates.

We believe the incentive works so well because it motivates parents to return their forms and it also motivates teachers to follow up with parents that do not return forms. The incentive is given for offering the consent form, so parents who choose not to participate in the evaluation are not “counted against” the classroom total. We just ask that teachers let us know that the parents declined to participate in the study.

In offering an incentive, our goal was to ensure that each parent knew about the evaluation and was able to make an informed choice about whether their child would participate. Thanks to the help of the teachers, we have achieved this goal. We’ve found that the right incentive can do wonders for motivating people to proactively participate in evaluation.