Who determines the point value of a survey? If the determination is made by the survey creator they can value the survey however they want. Presumably the survey creators are after certain data points from a group of participants. Those participants can be existing or potential customers from a particular demographic, between 25 and 40, married women, Republicans, people that are interested in cruises, people in a particular zip code, etc. They can then determine the value of the survey accordingly. Often a high paying survey can be very long. I took a survey today on tea that took almost an hour and paid very well. Surveys often estimate the time it will take to complete and offer higher compensation to get people to finish it.If the survey writers only want to know how many people traveled to Boston for the 4th of July a survey may take a minute or so and pay 1 or 1.5 points. Most low paying surveys take little time to complete and are compensated accordingly.



I attempt low point surveys under the assumption the survey will be short and the qualifications will be broad and I will likely qualify. What is more important to the survey writers, completed surveys or disqualified respondents? I would think completed surveys is the goal. It would be interesting to talk to the companies that use surveys for their data points to learn their criteria.

One thing we can agree on is putting the qualifying questions at the end of the survey and then determining the survey taker is not in the correct demographic. In my estimation they are just stealing information, they have their survey completed and do not have to pay any compensation. Another annoying gambit is the dreaded "there has been an error" message and the survey closes.