Web Survey Bibliography
Workplace Web surveys are increasingly used with - or instead of - print surveys to measure employee motivation, program effectiveness, and staff promotion. But few companies embracing them are aware of a fundamental problem: The same question posed on the Web and in print can yield very different answers. Five types of problems can undermine the validity and reliability of Web surveys: 1. Response rates for Web surveys can be as much as 80% lower than those for their print counterparts. 2. Poorly designed Web surveys usually produce implausibly favorable responses. 3. In the workplace, printed surveys and Web surveys usually attract distinctly different respondents. 4. Web surveys tend to elicit responses that are "clipped" - they artificially compress the range between the high and low scores. 5. Web surveys almost always reshuffle rankings of scores. Solutions to these problems are discussed.
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