When you’re collecting survey data, time is of the essence. Participants can give you high-quality data for only about five minutes. After that, they tend to lose focus and interest—and the data quality plummets. To maximize research effectiveness, you need to collect the most data possible from each participant in the shortest amount of time. Paring down a lengthy list of questions can be challenging, but the effort pays off in a better-quality data set.

But when you’re limited to explicit-only questions and responses, you’re unlikely to gather sufficient data in five minutes. It might appear to happen sometimes, but in such cases your participants are probably rushing through the survey.

Traditionally, the number of participants is the primary measurement of significance when you’re conducting a research study. But while volume of participation is key, it misses another dimension—the quality of that participation. Was the respondent overwhelmed by your questions, uncertain about their answers, or worse—bored and distracted?

The offer of an incentive, such as a gift card, for completing the survey is a common method for boosting participation numbers—but it adds another layer of confusion around the resulting data. Were responders rushing through the questions for the sole purpose of gaining a prize at the end? Are their answers reliable?

While there’s no way to completely resolve those questions, pursuing real digital engagement can help to capture more robust behavior data in a survey, offering a new level of insights for your research project. Here are three steps you can take toward better digital engagement with your surveys.

We live in the age of big data. It’s a fast-moving, ever-growing ocean of information that can easily overwhelm those who are leading research projects. How do you gain access to the highest quality of data? And once you have it, what will you do with it?

Researchers are well aware that data itself carries no value. Insights spring from the questions you bring to the table. For a survey designer, defining the optimal questions to ask has become the first step toward innovative research.

And today, many researchers realize that participants’ social and cognitive biases greatly impact results—because explicit responses do not represent the whole picture.