Mobile Optimisation Research

Since 2018 MRS has been facilitating an annual research project to explore the impact that poor mobile design and lack of mobile optimisation has on participation, completion, and response rates in research.  

During 2025 Kantar, Cint and Toluna have been working with MRS giving access to their 2024 response rate data to identify trends in participation and response rates. The project includes response data from 13 markets: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, the UK and the US, plus satisfaction data from Australia, the UK and the US. For previous years Dynata also provided response data.  The data from 2023 have been calculated with Dynata excluded. The change between 2023 and 2024 for the three participating companies was applied to the published 2023 returns.  Overall Dynata’s data was assumed to have changed by the same amount as the average of the remaining three participant organisations.

The top line results for the response data from this year’s project is available here

For 2025 a separate participant topical survey was undertaken to identify some of the underlying causes behind the trend data. This survey explores participant motivations for completing surveys, identifies the activities which research is competing against for participant attention, and assesses the demographic differences for these issues. For the first time, this survey has been extended beyond the markets of the US, UK, and Australia into India, Brazil, and South Africa.

Drawing from the research, MRS has produced some best practice recommendations (PDF) to help practitioners to produce better mobile design, increase optimisation and to improve completion and response rates. This guidance was updated in 2023. This guidance is supported by the US Insights Association and The Research Society of Australia.

The results from the research undertaken each year from 2018 to 2025 are available as webinars via the following links:

Mobile optimisation research 2025 webinar 



Mobile optimisation research 2024 webinar 

Mobile optimisation research 2023 webinar 

Mobile optimisation research 2022 webinar

Mobile optimisation research 2021 webinar

Mobile optimisation research 2020 webinar

Mobile optimisation research 2019 webinar