Attention Checks & Speeders

Also known as: Trap Questions, Quality Filters, Speeders, Straight-liners, Red Herrings

Trap questions and time filters to detect respondents who are not reading questions carefully, contaminating data.

Attention Checks (also called trap questions or instructed response items) are questions designed to detect respondents who are not carefully reading survey questions. They typically instruct the respondent to select a specific option ('Please select Strongly Agree for this question') and those who fail the instruction are identified as low quality.

Speeders are respondents who complete the survey in significantly less than average time (typically <50% of the median sample time), indicating they probably aren't reading the questions.

Straight-liners are respondents who systematically select the same response in question batteries (e.g., always selecting 5 on a scale of 1 to 5), indicating they are not discriminating between items.

Atlantia applies multiple layers of real-time quality filters during data collection to guarantee sample integrity.