Online quizzes and polls are more likely to be lighter in tone and are meant to gather more wide-ranging consumer lifestyle information than more formal research surveys—prompting women to participate more for the fun experience. Women may well not even need an incentive or a prize to feel motivated to participate. Rather, it's all about whether they feel they are discovering something about themselves while they answer the questions.

Furthermore, the self-discovery quiz stimulates women's sharing and comparing that can expand the number of participants and the information you learn in a viral way. The idea is that once you learn about yourself by taking the quiz and seeing the results, you may be more inclined to share revealing information with friends and get them inspired as well.

Tickle.com offers the best examples we've seen of fun self-discovery quizzes. The capability to share and compare with friends is an attractive option that gets quiz takers returning to the site again and again. With fluff tests (like "Who's your celebrity crush?") to Ph.D.-certified quizzes (like "What's your career personality?"), Tickle.com has transformed self-discovery into an enjoyable and satisfying pastime. Even though it may be geared toward a more Gen X or Gen Y audience, there was inherent value and fun in taking the quiz even for those of us who were older. (Just finding out that our personalities matched our dogs' was all the reward we needed.)

The RealAge.com test is another online quiz that delivers value to participants, especially women focused on their health. We have found this test unbelievably compelling ourselves, and know that many other women feel the same way: The patented private, free test provides your RealAge, your body's biological age based on how well you've maintained it and your personal lifestyle. The test also indicates your age reduction benefits (what you are doing right) and makes age reduction recommendations (a personalized three month plan of what you can do to be younger, including appropriate lifestyle changes and a personalized nutrition analysis to improve your diet).

There's the benefit of increased health awareness and education from participating in the RealAge test, for certain. But, there can also be a sense of pride in finding out that your biological age may be 50, while your RealAge is only 42! (Should we pause here while you go online to take the quiz?)

The incentive for a RealAge test taker, beyond the great reports and advice at the end of the test, is that all along the course of the fairly lengthy survey you watch your age being recalculated: getting pushed up or knocked down by a few years. So, if you check the box that says you've moved in the past year, look out, you've just added a few years to your RealAge, and you learn that even before you advance to the next screen of questions. It can almost feel like a game.

On the opposite end of the spectrum of online quizzes or full surveys like RealAge's, are polls—one- or two-question quick-hit surveys that usually automatically recalculate to give you the sense that the brand is right there listening. Seeing how your answer compared to others' is fun as well. The questions in a poll may be straightforward, if not simply "yes" or "no," but they still offer entertainment value to the participant while they deliver data to the brand.

The weekly poll on StartSampling.com (see more about them below) is an example of how these polls work. The day we tried the poll the question was, what was the last thing you baked? Our answer, cookies, was the most popular response at that moment in time. Major news? No. Quirky bit of entertainment that helped us compare ourselves to others? Yes. Finally, was that poll a way for the site to collect general profiling information about its visitors? Indeed.