Response latency as an indicator of optimizing in online questionnaires

In answering questions, respondents carry out four mental steps: comprehension, retrieval, judgment, and answer selection. Those who carefully employ all steps are called optimizers, while those who invest less effort and skip steps are called satisficers. In this study, we compared the response latencies of optimizers and satisficers as they answered questions on a Web administered personality assessment. Using spline regression and controlling for possible confounding variables, we provided evidence that optimizers invest more time than satisficers when answering questions in the first section of a questionnaire. This supports the perspective that deeper cognitive processing requires greater effort and takes more time. We also showed that, as a test ]progresses, both groups spend less time until they attain a maximum responding velocity.