The response rate shows you how many of the people who received a pulse survey actually responded during a given period. It gives you a clear picture of how engaged your employees are with the surveys. Following up on response rate lets you take an active role in shaping engagement across your organisation.
Looking for round-over-round comparisons on a Periodic survey? See Understand your periodic survey results.
How is it calculated?
- Pulse surveys: the response rate includes all send-outs during the selected time period. The total number of possible responses is the sum of all recipients across all send-outs. See the example below.
- Periodic surveys: the response rate is calculated for each round. The total number of possible responses is the number of recipients of that specific round, and the rate is locked when the round closes.
Response rate = Total responses ÷ Total possible responses
Example: If 4 surveys were sent out with a total of 100 possible responses, and 68 responses were received, the response rate is 68%.
How it differs from Participation
| Response rate | Participation | |
|---|---|---|
| What it measures | Survey responses out of all possible responses | People who responded at least once |
| What it counts | Every sendout | Each unique person |
| Example: A user who answered 1 out of 5 surveys | Counts as 1 out of 5 | Counts as a participant (100%) |
In short, response rate measures survey completeness, while participation measures the number of people reached.
What affects the number of recipients?
The number of recipients for each send-out can vary depending on a few things:
- Changes in team membership, such as users joining or leaving
- Users excluded from a specific survey
- Users with paused accounts
Are managers included?
Managers' responses are included in the teams where they contribute to the temperature results. This follows the manager contribution setting in your system settings.
You can see each team's contributors by going to Administration > Teams > select a team > Contributors.
Settings
The response rate card on the Temperature page can be enabled or disabled. Note that this setting controls both response rate and participation together.
- Change for the entire organisation: Administration > System & templates > System > Temperature > Extended permission settings > Enable or disable Response rate and Participation > Save
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Change your own view: Change content in the Overview
Good to know
- Response rate is only visible to users with extended permissions. Team members cannot see it.
- You can never see who has or hasn't responded to a survey, only aggregated statistics for the team.