Providing an incentive to survey respondents is a great way to increase response rates and one of my favourites is the prize draw.

Running a prize draw as an incentives raises the question on how you are going to select your prize winner. I laugh when I think about my first research job where I would spend hours making little numbered tickets, placing them in a box and trying to find someone potentially impartial in the office to make the prize draw.

A far quicker and more efficient method is to use a random number selector. The key thing is to attribute a sequential numerical indeifiter to each response. One of the easiest ways to do this is to place your survey data into excel and use the row number as a guide.

The next step is to select a random number selector. Google ‘random number selector’ and you will find a few. My personal choice is Random.org The easiest way to get your random number is to use the ‘True Random Number Generator’ on the home page. Enter in the range of numbers, push the button and hey presto! you have a random number and your prize draw.

While it may sound a little weird I typically don’t like to go with the first number it gives me. I start of by letter the generator select a number between 1 and 10. The response from this query then gives me how many attempts I will make before I go with the final generated number. I.e. the ‘N’ th query will be the prize winner.