It is common knowledge in the research profession that survey respondents have become fatigued and bored while taking online surveys, leading to poorer data quality and lower response rates. Therefore, researchers have attempted to retain respondents’ attention by incorporating methods that we hypothesize make the survey more interesting, such as gamification and creative formatting. One of these techniques is visual scale enhancements. But as these scale enhancements are introduced into surveys, researchers have to wonder if they affect respondents’ ratings, particularly if there are plans to “upgrade” a tracking survey after it has been in field for a period of time. This article intends to show whether there is an ideal method for scale formatting by analyzing results from an experiment to test different formats in an online survey.
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