Every year the number of people who access the web, either at home or at work, increases.
This increase in popularity has led to more survey organizations using the web as a means of
collecting survey data, either as the sole means or in mix-modal data collection. As a result
there are more and more survey questionnaires available on the web. But what are the
questionnaire design implications of this new method of data collection on surveys that are
already well established on paper? Many papers have addressed the quantitative aspects of
paper versus web questionnaires e.g. response rate, data quality etc. (Kwak and Radler, 2002;
Cobanoglu et al., 2001; Couper, 2000; Couper et al., 1999; Schaefer and Dillman, 1998).
However, there is very little literature that specifically addresses design issues between the
two modes. One particular area of concern is the length of the questionnaire; longer
questionnaires can have an increased download time. Any delay in downloading the
questionnaire will lead to an increase in completion time, which will have a detrimental effect
on actual and/or perceived respondent burden. In contrast, the use of routing and the general
functionality options available for web questionnaires can reduce the complexity of the
questionnaire, which can lead to a reduction in respondent burden. The aims of this paper are to
compare and contrast the design and functionality of web and paper questionnaires from the
survey organization and respondent perspectives. In the paper, examples are given from recent
business survey research and Census development work.