Web Survey Bibliography
Background: Attrition, or dropout, is a problem faced by many online health interventions, potentially threatening the inferential value of online randomized controlled trials.
Objective: In the context of a randomized controlled trial of an online weight management intervention, where 85% of the baseline participants were lost to follow-up at the 12-month measurement, the objective was to examine the effect of nonresponse on key outcomes and explore ways to reduce attrition in follow-up surveys.
Methods: A sample of 700 nonrespondents to the 12-month online follow-up survey was randomly assigned to a mail or telephone nonresponse follow-up survey. We examined response rates in the two groups, costs of follow-up, reasons for nonresponse, and mode effects. We ran several logistic regression models, predicting response or nonresponse to the 12-month online survey as well as predicting response or nonresponse to the follow-up survey.
Results: We analyzed 210 follow-up respondents in the mail and 170 in the telephone group. Response rates of 59% and 55% were obtained for the telephone and mail nonresponse follow-up surveys, respectively. A total of 197 respondents (51.8%) gave reasons related to technical issues or email as a means of communication, with older people more likely to give technical reasons for noncompletion; 144 (37.9%) gave reasons related to the intervention or the survey itself. Mail follow-up was substantially cheaper: We estimate that the telephone survey cost about US $34 per sampled case, compared to US $15 for the mail survey. The telephone responses were subject to possible social desirability effects, with the telephone respondents reporting significantly greater weight loss than the mail respondents. The respondents to the nonresponse follow-up did not differ significantly from the 12-month online respondents on key outcome variables.
Conclusions: Mail is an effective way to reduce attrition to online surveys, while telephone follow-up might lead to overestimating the weight loss for both the treatment and control groups. Nonresponse bias does not appear to be a significant factor in the conclusions drawn from the randomized controlled trial.
Journal of medical internet research (full text)
Web survey bibliography (4086)
- Web Surveys Versus Other Survey Modes: An Updated Meta-analysis Comparing Response Rates ; 2016; Wengrzik, J.; Bosnjak, M.; Lozar Manfreda, K.
- The Effect of a Pre-due Date Reminder Letter on Non response in a Business Survey ; 2016; Hernandez, A. D.; Fan, C. C.; Tuttle, A.
- Adapting the Alternative Questionnaire Experiment for a Telephone Survey: Preparing for Changes to the...; 2016; Patten, E.; Brown, A.; Parker, K.
- Retrospective Measurement of Students’ Extracurricular Activities with a Self-administered Calendar...; 2016; Furthmueller, P.
- Privacy Concerns in Responses to Sensitive Questions. A Survey Experiment on the Influence of Numeric...; 2016; Bader, F., Bauer, J., Kroher, M., Riordan, P.
- Ballpoint Pens as Incentives with Mail Questionnaires – Results of a Survey Experiment; 2016; Heise, M.
- Non-Observation Bias in an Address-Register-Based CATI/CAPI Mixed Mode Survey; 2016; Lipps, O.
- Spatial Modeling through GIS to Reveal Error Potent ial in Survey Data: Where, What and How Much ; 2016; English, N.; Ventura, I.; Bilgen, I.; Stern, M. J.
- Bees to Honey or Flies to Manure? How the Usual Subject Recruitment Exacerbates the Shortcomings of...; 2016; Snell, S. A., Hillygus, D. S.
- Thinking Inside the Box Visual Design of the Response Box Affects Creative Divergent Thinking in an...; 2016; Mohr, A. H.; Sell, A.; Lindsay, T.
- Detecting Insufficient Effort Responding with an Infrequency Scale: Evaluating Validity and Participant...; 2016; Huang, J. L.; Bowling, N. A.; Liu, Me.; Li, Yu.
- Detecting careless respondents in web-based questionnaires: Which method to use?; 2016; Niesen, A. S. M.; Meijer, R. R.; Tendeiro, J. N.
- Web surveys for offline rural communities ; 2016; Gichohi, B. W.
- On-line life history calendar and sensitive topics: A pilot study; 2016; Morselli, D.; Berchtold, A.; Granell, J.-C. S.; Berchtold, And.
- Does survey mode matter for studying electoral behaviour? Evidence from the 2009 German Longitudinal...; 2016; Bytzek, E.; Bieber, I. E.
- The impact of visual design and response formats on data quality in a web survey of MOOC students; 2016; Maloshonok, N.; Terentev, E.
- An experiment comparing grids and item-by-item formats in web surveys completed through PCs and smartphones...; 2016; Revilla, M.; Toninelli, D.; Ochoa, C.
- Establishing the accuracy of online panels for survey research; 2016; Bruggen, E.; van den Brakel, J.; Krosnick, J. A.
- Gamifying Questions Using Text Alone; 2016; Cape, P. J.
- Assessing the Effects of Participant Preference and Demographics in the Usage of Web-based Survey Questionnaires...; 2016; Mlikotic, R.; Parker, B.; Rajapakshe, R.
- Improving Inpatient Surveys: Web-Based Computer Adaptive Testing Accessed via Mobile Phone QR Codes; 2016; Chien, T. S.; Lin, W.S.
- Surveying End-of-Life Medical Decisions in France: Evaluation of an Innovative Mixed-Mode Data Collection...; 2016; Legleye, S; Pennec, S.; Monnier, A.; Stephan, A.; Brouard, N.; Bilsen, J.; Cohen, J.
- Problems and Prospects in Survey Research; 2016; Moy, P.; Murphy, J.
- When will Nonprobability Surveys Mirror Probability Surveys? Considering Types of Inference and Weighting...; 2016; Pasek, J.
- Eye-tracking Social Desirability Bias; 2016; Kaminska, O.; Foulsham, T.
- Evaluating Three Approaches to Statistically Adjust for Mode Effects; 2016; Kolenikov, S.; Kennedy, C.
- Distractions: The Incidence and Consequences of Interruptions for Survey Respondents ; 2016; Ansolabehere, S.; Schaffner, B. F.
- The Effect of CATI Questions, Respondents, and Interviewers on Response Time; 2016; Olson, K.; Smyth, J. D.
- Pre-Survey Text Messages (SMS) Improve Participation Rate in an Australian Mobile Telephone Survey:...; 2016; Dal Grande, E.; Chittleborough, C. R.; Campostrini, S.; Dollard, M.; Taylor, A. W.
- Pitfalls, Potentials, and Ethics of Online Survey Research: LGBTQ and Other Marginalized and Hard-to...; 2016; McInroy, L. B.
- Effects of Personalization and Invitation Email Length on Web-Based Survey Response Rates; 2016; Trespalacios, J. H.; Perkins, R. A.
- Linearization Variance Estimators for Mixed ‒ mode Survey Data when Response Indicators are Modeled...; 2016; Demnati, A.
- Forecasting proportional representation elections from non-representative expectation surveys; 2016; Graefe, A.
- Short and Sweet? Length and Informative Content of Open-Ended Responses Using SMS as a Research Mode; 2016; Walsh, E.; Brinker, J. K.
- Adaptive survey designs to minimize survey mode effects – a case study on the Dutch Labor Force...; 2016; Calinescu, M.; Schouten, B.
- Mixing modes of data collection in Swiss social surveys: Methodological report of the LIVES-FORS mixed...; 2016; Roberts, C.; Joye, D.; Staehli, M. E.
- What is the gain in a probability-based online panel to provide Internet access to sampling units that...; 2016; Revilla, M.; Cornilleau, A.; Cousteaux, A-S.; Legleye, S; de Pedraza, P.
- Representative web-survey!; 2016; Linde, P.
- Assessing targeted approach letters: effects in different modes on response rates, response speed and...; 2016; Lynn, P.
- New Generation of Online Questionnaires?; 2016; Revilla, M.; Ochoa, C.; Turbina, A.
- The Analysis of Respondent’s Behavior toward Edit Messages in a Web Survey; 2016; Park, Y.
- Refining the Web Response Option in the Multiple Mode Collection of the American Community Survey; 2016; Hughes, T.; Tancreto, J.
- The Utility of an Online Convenience Panel for Reaching Rare and Dispersed Populations; 2016; Sell, R.; Goldberg, S.; Conron, K.
- Assessment of Innovations in Data Collection Technology for Understanding Society; 2016; Couper, M. P.
- Comparing online and telephone survey results in the context of a skin cancer prevention campaign evaluation...; 2016; Hollier, L.P.; Pettigrew, S.; Slevin, T.; Strickland, M.; Minto, C.
- Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk; 2016; Berinsky, A.; Huber, G. A.; Lenz, G. S.
- Setting Up an Online Panel Representative of the General Population The German Internet Panel; 2016; Blom, A. G.; Gathmann, C.; Krieger, U.
- Implementation of Web-Based Respondent Driven Sampling among Men Who Have Sex with Men in Sweden; 2016; Stroemdahl, S.; Lu, X.; Bengtsson, L.; Liljeros, F.; Thorson, A.
- Options for Fielding and Analyzing Web Surveys; 2016; Schonlau, M.; Couper, M. P.
- Report of the Inquiry into the 2015 British general election opinion polls; 2016; Sturgis, P., Baker, N., Callegaro, M., Fisher, St., Green, J., Jennings, W., Kuha, J., Lauderdale, B...