Web Survey Bibliography
This paper has two major goals. The first is to examine how people with differing demographic characteristics (education, income, sex, age) may exhibit differences in a variety of respondent behaviors, including response non-differentiation, response order effects, and response style (extreme, central tendency) in web-based surveys. We also explored the consequences of these respondent behaviors on data quality. The second goal is to advance our understanding on how psychological constructs (need for cognition, need for evaluation, and social-orientation variables) might mediate the effects of demographics on non-differentiation and response style. For the first goal, in four large datasets based on web-based studies we analyzed how demographic variables were related to response behavior (including completion time for two of the studies). In these studies we found some indication that non-differentiation was more likely to occur with respondents with less, rather than more education. We also found that the extreme response style was somewhat more associated with less education as well. Sex and age of respondent were also somewhat related to response style, but not as clearly with non-differentiation. The fifth study had 3933 respondents. Respondents completed a series of items designed to measure a variety of psychological constructs and then were presented with a series of tasks involving ratings across a variety of topics. With regard to the psychological measures, we found that the effects of demographics on response effects were moderated by the need for cognition – those who had more education expressed a higher need for cognition, and were less likely to engage in non-differentiation. We also found a number of effects for some very specific variables on speed of completion and response style.
Web Survey Bibliography - Thomas, R. K. (64)
- Ordering Your Attention: Response Order Effects in Parallel Phone and Online Surveys; 2012; Barlas, F. M., Thomas, R. K.
- A Shot in the Dark: Measurement Influence on Likelihood to Vaccination; 2012; Higgins, W. B., Thomas, R. K.
- Response Anchoring and Polarity Effects on Endorsement and Response Patterns; 2012; Higgins, W. B., Thomas, R. K.
- Evaluating the Impact of Emails and Landing Page on Web Survey Access; 2012; Falcone, A. E., Thomas, R. K., Mack, A. R.
- I Got a Feeling: Comparison of Feeling Thermometers with Verbally Labeled Scales in Attitude Measurement...; 2012; Thomas, R. K., Bremer, J.
- The River Flows: Comparison of Experimental Effect Replicability with Different Sample Sources; 2012; Thomas, R. K.
- How Likely?: Comparisons of Behavioral Intention Measurement Validity; 2012; Bremer, J., Thomas, R. K.
- Effects of response format on requalification for recontact studies; 2011; Thomas, R. K.
- Slider Scales Causing Serious Problems With Less Educated Respondents; 2011; Funke, F., Reips, U. -D., Thomas, R. K.
- Cross-country Comparisons: Effects of Scale Type and Response Style Differences; 2011; Thomas, R. K.
- A Comparison of Branching Response Formats with Single Response Formats; 2011; Thomas, R. K.
- Cleaving the Past Behind: A Comparison of Response Formats in the Measurement of Ethnic and Racial Origins...; 2011; Barlas, F. M., Thomas, R. K., Higgins, W. B.
- An Injured Party?: A Comparison of Political Party Response Formats in Party Identification.; 2011; Schwarz, S., Barlas, F. M., Thomas, R. K., Corso, R. A., Szoc, R.
- Sliders for the Smart: Type of Rating Scale on the Web Interacts With Educational Level; 2011; Funke, F., Reips, U. -D., Thomas, R. K.
- Function follows form: Effects of response format on self-reported individuals and household disability...; 2010; Falcone, A. E., Thomas, R. K.
- Response format effects on measurement of employment; 2009; Thomas, R. K., Dillman, D. A., Smyth, J. D.
- Twisting rating scales in Web surveys: Slider scales versus categorical scales of horizontal versus...; 2009; Funke, F. Reips, U. -D. Thomas, R. K.
- Increasing Confidence in Survey Estimates with Visual Analogue Scales; 2009; Funke, F., Reips, U. -D., Thomas, R. K.
- Response Formats in Cross-cultural Comparisons in Web-based Surveys; 2009; Thomas, R. K.l, Terhanian, G., Funke, F.
- Optimal Design of Branching Questions to Measure Bipolar Constructs; 2009; Malhotra, N., Krosnick, J. A., Thomas, R. K.
- Comparing Adolescent Response Bias Between Internet and Telephone Surveys ; 2009; Klein, J. D., Graff Havens, C., Thomas, R. K.
- Parallel Phone and Web-based Interviews: Effects of Sample and Weighting on Comparability and Validity...; 2008; Thomas, R. K., Krane, D., Taylor, H., Terhanian, G.
- Response Non-Differentiation and Response Styles in Web-Based Studies: Causes and Consequences ; 2008; Frisina, L. T., Thomas, R. K.
- Visual Analogue Scales in Cross Cultural Web Surveys ; 2008; Funke, F., Reips, U. -D., Thomas, R. K.
- Truth in measurement: Comparing Web Based interviewing Techniques; 2007; Couper, M. P., Terhanian, G., Bremer, J., Thomas, R. K.
- A Comparison of Visual Analog and Graphic Rating Scales ; 2007; Thomas, R. K., Couper, M. P.
- The Best of Intentions: Response Format Effects on Measures of Behavioral lntention ; 2007; Thomas, R. K., Klein, J. D., Behnke, C. S., Terhanian, G.
- Scaling Social Desirability: Establishing its Influence Across Modes; 2007; Krane, D., Thomas, R. K., Taylor, H.
- On the Importance of Form: Effects of Response Format on Measures off importance; 2007; Thomas, R. K., Behnke, C. S., Allenza, J., Klein, J. D.
- Improving importance Assessment: Experimental Comparisons between Variations of Ranking and Rating Tasks...; 2007; Thomas, R. K., Allenza, J., Behnke, C. S.
- Behavioral self-report measures. International extensions; 2006; Thomas, R. K., Klein, J. D.
- Merely Incidental?: Effects of Response Format on Self-reported Behavior; 2006; Thomas, R. K., Klein, J. D.
- Response Order Effects in International Online Surveys; 2006; Thomas, R. K., Greenfield, S., Bremer, J.
- Attitude Measurement in Phone and Online Surveys: Can Different Modes and Samples Yield Similar Results...; 2006; Thomas, R. K., Krane, D., Taylor, H., Terhanian, G.
- Response format effects in self-report of political and non-political contributions; 2005; Thomas, R. K. et al.
- Rating versus comparative trade-off measures. Trending changes in political issues across time and predictive...; 2005; Thomas, R. K. et al.
- A Comparison of an Online Card Sorting Task to a Rating Task; 2005; Thomas, R. K., Bayer, L. R., Johnson, A. M., Behnke, C. S.
- A Comparison of Presidential Candidate Vote Intention Measures in U.S. Elections; 2005; Thomas, R. K., Krane, D., Sanders, M. G., Behnke, C. S.
- To Vote or Not to Vote?: A Comparison of Vote Intention Measures; 2005; Thomas, R. K., Sanders, M. G., Smith, R., Behnke, C. S.
- Response Order Effects in Online Surveys; 2005; Thomas, R. K., Behnke, C. S., Johnson, A. M.
- How Does Social Desirability Affect Responses?: Differences in Telephone and Online Surveys; 2005; Taylor, H., Krane, D., Thomas, R. K.
- On the primacy of affect in attitude-behavior research; 2004; Thomas, R. K., Schofield, C. M.
- Measuring television viewership through a multi-method approach; 2004; Terhanian, G., Bremer, J., Delaney, T. F., Thomas, R. K.
- Behavioral Intention Measurement: International Findings; 2004; Thomas, R. K., Terhanian, G., Bayer, L. R.
- A Comparison of Sliding Scales with Other Scale Types in Online Surveys; 2004; Bayer, L. R., Thomas, R. K.
- A Comparison of Ranking versus Rating in Online Surveys; 2004; Thomas, R. K.
- To Do or Not to Do?: A Comparison of Behavioral Intention Measures; 2004; Thomas, R. K., Behnke, C. S., Johnson, A. M.
- Item Non-response: Don't Know about Mandatory Responses?; 2004; Thomas, R. K., Johnson, A. M., Behnke, C. S.
- Rating versus Comparative Trade-off Measures; 2004; Thomas, R. K., Behnke, C. S., Johnson, A. M.
- It's Only Incidental: International Web Survey Considerations; 2004; Thomas, R. K., Klein, J. D., Behnke, C. S.
