Respondents have a limited amount of time and are easily distracted or discouraged from completing surveys. By keeping the length and complexity low, you can counter some of these risks resulting in:
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Higher completion rates (respondents getting to the end of the survey).
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Fewer Survey Drop-outs (respondents dropping out of the survey before finishing).
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Fewer straight-lining answers (respondents using shortcuts or guessing).
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More thoughtful text-based answers.
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Better quality data to analyze and make decisions on.
Of course, this depends on the type of research being done. For example, academic research on the psychology of decision-making will certainly be longer than a touch-point survey from a banker interaction or employee engagement.
There is no exact science to selecting a target length—it depends on the project objectives, which define the depth and breadth of the questions asked.
As a rule, keep it as short as possible while fulfilling the project objectives, remembering that every 10 questions take approximately 2 minutes to answer.
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General guidelines to inform your survey length targets:
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For longer surveys, consider providing incentives for completion. Charitable monetary donations work well (particularly for Employee Research) as small donations in aggregate make a big difference to not-for-profits, but an individual may not value a small monetary amount. Alternatively, a chance to win a larger more valuable prize can be considered.