What Is Response Rate?
The percentage of people invited to a survey who actually completed it — completed responses divided by invitations sent.
Response rate is completed responses ÷ number of people invited, expressed as a percentage. Send an email survey to 1,000 customers and get 150 completions back, and your response rate is 15%.
Response rate varies enormously by channel and context — email surveys to a cold list often land in the low single digits to 20-something percent, while an in-app or post-interaction intercept survey (triggered right after someone uses a product or closes a support ticket) can run much higher because it’s timed to a moment the respondent already cares about.
The biggest levers on response rate are length (shorter surveys get more completions), relevance (asking people about something they actually experienced), timing (right after the relevant moment, not weeks later), and how often you’re asking the same audience — see survey fatigue.
Response rate is distinct from completion rate, which measures the percentage of people who started a survey and finished it, rather than the percentage of invited people who responded at all.
Example
- Response rate
- 240 ÷ 2,000=12%Completed responses divided by the number of people invited.
What it does not tell you
- A rate depends on how it is defined: who counts as invited, and whether partial answers count. State the definition next to the number so it can be compared.
- A low rate does not by itself mean the results are biased, and a high rate does not prove they are not. What matters is whether the people who answered differ from the people who did not on the thing you are measuring.
Sources
- American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). Standard Definitions: Final Dispositions of Case Codes and Outcome Rates for Surveys.
- Groves, R. M. (2006). Nonresponse rates and nonresponse bias in household surveys. Public Opinion Quarterly, 70(5), 646-675.
How to Improve Response Rate in SurveyRock
SurveyRock's response dashboard tracks response rate in real time as invitations go out, so you can see what's working (and what's not) mid-campaign instead of only after it closes.