Hello, I’m Jennifer Borland. I am currently the president of the Indiana Evaluation Association and also serve as the Director of Research Programs at Rockman et al Cooperative. I love opportunities to think creatively about evaluation and approach specific problems in original ways.
There is an art to figuring out the right incentive to drive participation for any kind of evaluation activity. Do you offer something small to everyone who participates, or a chance to win one or a small number of more valuable incentives? Offer too much, and you might blow your budget; offer too little, and you may not attract enough participants. Further complicating matters is the fact that no pool of potential survey respondents is identical – what might work well for a group of high-school students in California may not fly with a group of informal science educators in St. Louis. Not surprisingly, the true value of any incentive is in the eye of the beholder, and with that in mind I wanted to share a story about a successful survey campaign that incentivized respondents with a chance to win a toy dinosaur.
As part of an evaluation effort for Radiolab, the popular science podcast and radio show produced by WNYC, my team sought to collect survey responses from people who had attended the live show: Radiolab Live: Apocalyptical. We’d originally planned to use a drawing for an iPod as an incentive, but the high cost of an iPod presented some legal hurdles so we faced the added challenge of finding an incentive that had no real monetary value, but would still be seen as valuable by potential respondents. It was Molly Webster, a member of Radiolab’s production team, who ultimately stumbled upon the genius idea to offer a chance to win a toy dinosaur signed by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show’s two hosts at the time.
What made the dino such a great incentive? First off, dinosaurs played prominently in the Apocalyptical program, so it was a prize that was likely to resonate with individuals who’d seen the show. Secondly, the dinosaur had a very minimal cash value. Thirdly, since it was small and unbreakable, it would be easy to ship to a winner anywhere in the US. But most importantly, I suspect it was the hosts’ signatures that elevated it from a cool, albeit quirky, prize to something that Radiolab fans really wanted to win.
As an evaluator, I’m thrilled when I get a couple hundred survey responses for a program of this nature – so I was truly amazed when we got more than 6000 survey responses! Did the dino make a difference? Obviously we can’t know if it was a more popular incentive choice than an iPod would have been, but based on past experiences where we’d offered a more conventional incentive and gotten far fewer responses, I feel that the creativity and uniqueness of the incentive might have been an advantage. Ultimately, 81% of respondents opted in for a chance to win the dino – and one lucky respondent received a plastic dinosaur signed by Jad and Robert in her mailbox.
Hot Tips
1) Don’t be afraid to think outside the box where incentives are concerned. There are lots of options beyond gift cards!
2) Keep your audience in mind and try to come up with incentives that they will perceive to be valuable, even if something has little or no monetary value.
3) Involve clients in the incentive-brainstorming process. Your clients know their programs and audiences better than anyone and might have a brilliant incentive idea that could drive thousands of responses for your next survey.
The American Evaluation Association is hosting Indiana Evaluation Association (IEA) Affiliate Week. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from IEA members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.