Turn Guest Responses On or Off

Engagement is best encouraged through registration and registration also unlocks the ability for deeper analysis. However, in some cases, you may prefer not to use Polco's verification feature (to verify residency of respondents). You can enable guest responses (disable registration) at the bottom of the Create Survey page. Do note that you won't be able to recontact respondents if you'd like to send a follow up question. 

While we recommend keeping guest responses OFF, here are some of the pros and cons of each option!

Having guest responses OFF…

• Pros:

  • Prevents respondents from answering more than once

  • Helps avoid skewed data results

  • Helps increase subscriber base by requiring email address and zip code

  • Respondents will be notified at the beginning of the survey that they must provide an email address to submit their survey, with the option to provide their name if they’d like to become verified subscribers

  • If a respondent is already a subscriber (has previously provided email address and zip code), they won’t get the notice at the beginning of the survey, but will once again be offered the option to become a verified subscriber by giving their first and last name at the end of the survey

  • Subscribers become part of your feedback panel, and you will be able to survey/poll your subscribers in the future

• Cons

  • Can be a hindrance to respondents who don’t wish to provide any information

Having guest responses ON…

• Pros

  • Can help increase the number of responses since no information will need to be provided

• Cons

  • Allows respondents to take the survey as many times as they’d like

  • Can provide skewed results if one person answers the survey multiple times

  • Will likely result in lower verification rates and fewer new subscribers (as providing this information is optional)