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Web Survey Bibliography

Title Asking for Numbers and Quantities: Visual Design Effects in Web Surveys and Paper and Pencil Surveys
Author Fuchs, M.
Year 2007
Access date 24.05.2007
Abstract

In almost every self-administered survey respondents are asked to report numbers, frequencies or quantities- Since closed ended questions with response categories are prone to scale effects, in many survey open questions are used to collect this kind of data. Previous research on the design of the answer boxes to open questions revealed o significant impact of their size, design, and of associated labels on the answers provided by respondents. Large boxes yield more detailed information; however, once the answer space becomes unreasonable large the proportion of overly detailed responses, explicit estimates and unrelated information increases. By contrast, small response boxes yield more hyping or bunching. Also, a label associated to the response box increases the accuracy of the response. So far, most of theses experiments have been conducted in paper and pencil surveys. In this paper we will extent this line of research to Web surveys. First, we will compare results from several mode experiments comparing the effect of various styles of answer boxes in o paper and pencil survey to a Web survey. Then we will assess the impact of the design feature of answer boxes in greater detail using data from field experiments embedded in Web surveys. The results of theses experiments underline the different respondent perceptions of Web surveys compared to paper and pencil surveys. The findings will be discussed in the light of visual design effects in Web surveys.

 

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Year of publication2007
Bibliographic typeConferences, workshops, tutorials, presentations
Full text availabilityAvailable on request
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Web survey bibliography - The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) 62th Annual Conference, 2007 (1)