Web Survey Bibliography
This paper tests a new method for encouraging Web survey respondents to complete a questionnaire once they have started it and, thus, reduce the number of breakoffs. This paper builds upon prior studies that have examined the effects of using feedback mechanisms in Web surveys to encourage questionnaire completion and breakoff reduction (Crawford, Couper, & Lamias, 2001; Couper, Traugott, & Lamias, 2001; Conrad, Couper, Tourangeau, & Peytchev, 2005; Heerwegh & Loosveldt, 2006; Matzat, Snijders, & van der Horst, 2009). The proposed method displays textual messages of encouragement intermittingly to Web survey respondents. We hypothesized that such messages would reduce the number of breakoffs or, at minimum, delay eventual breakoffs. We tested this hypothesis by mounting a Web survey experiment on a national sample of college students (National Survey of Living Learning Programs, 52 institutions, N = 110,427 students). The sample was divided into 3 mutually exclusive groups that received: (1) no messages of encouragement (control), (2) brief messages of encouragement with generic content, and (3) brief messages of encouragement that contained content tailored to their specific school. The results suggest no association between displaying messages of encouragement and deterring or delaying breakoffs. Further, no association was found between messages of encouragement and the amount of time respondents spent logged in to the survey instrument or the number of items presented to them. The failure to find evidence is analyzed and detailed recommendations for further research on the relationship between feedback mechanisms and survey completion are given.
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Web survey bibliography - Crawford, S. D. (25)
- The Effect of Mobile Web Survey Design on Screen Orientation Manipulation; 2014; Young, R.H.; Crawford, S. D.; Couper, M. P.; Nelson, T. F.
- Understanding Mobility: Consent and Capture of Geolocation Data in Web Surveys; 2014; Crawford, S. D.; McClain, C.; Young, R.H.; Nelson, T. F.
- Grid Formats, Data Quality, and Mobile Device Use: A Questionnaire Design Approach; 2013; McClain, C., Crawford, S. D.
- Examining the Feasibility of SMS as a Contact Mode for a College Student Survey; 2013; Crawford, S. D., McClain, C., O'Brien, S., Nelson, T. F.
- Web Survey Live Validations - What Are They Doing?; 2011; Crawford, S. D., McClain, C.
- Multi-Mode and Method Experiment in a Study of Nurses; 2010; Friese, C. R., Lee, C. S., O'Brien, S., Crawford, S. D.
- The Impact of Textual Messages of Encouragement on Web Survey Breakoffs: An Experiment ; 2009; Sakshaug, J. W., Crawford, S. D.
- Do Tailored Messages of Encouragement Reduce Web Survey Break-offs?; 2007; Sakshaug, J. W., Crawford, S. D., Inkelas, K. K.
- Web-Based Consent Form Design: An Experiment with Two Populations; 2006; Crawford, S. D., Eisenberg, D., Wimsatt, L., Golberstein, E.
- Using Interactive Web-Based Maps; 2006; Sinibaldi, J., Showen, S., Crawford, S. D., Saltz, R.
- The Social Science Web Survey System: Moving from 2.0 to 3.0; 2006; Crawford, S. D.
- Web Survey Design: Paging versus Scrolling; 2006; Peytchev, A., Couper, M. P., McCabe, S. E., Crawford, S. D.
- Unintended Consequences of Incentive Induced Response Rate Differences; 2005; Pope, D., Crawford, S. D., Johnson, E. O., McCabe, S. E.
- Using the Web to Survey College Students: Institutional Characteristics That Influence Survey Quality...; 2005; Crawford, S. D., McCabe, S. E., Inkelas, K. K.
- Mode effects for collecting alcohol and tobacco data among 3rd and 4th grade students: A randomized...; 2005; McCabe, S. E., Boyd, C. J., Young, A., Crawford, S. D., Pope, D.
- Developmnent and testing of web questionnaires; 2004; Baker, R. P., Crawford, S. D., Swinehart, J.
- Web Survey Design: Paging vs. Scrolling; 2004; Peytchev, A., Crawford, S. D., McCabe, S. E., Conrad, F. G., Couper, M. P.
- Validations in Web-based Surveys; 2003; Crawford, S. D., Peytchev, A.
- What They See Is What We Get: Response Options for Web Surveys; 2003; Couper, M. P., Tourangeau, R., Conrad, F. G., Crawford, S. D.
- The local/global decision in Internet research; 2002; Crawford, S. D., Jones, S., Rowen, C.
- Evaluation of Web Survey Data Collection Systems; 2002; Crawford, S. D.
- From Mail to Web: Improving Response Rates and Data Collection Efficiencies; 2002; Crawford, S. D., McCabe, S. E., Couper, M. P., Boyd, C. J.
- Testing Web Questionnaires; 2002; Crawford, S. D., Baker, R. P.
- A Nonresponse Analysis of a Mail-Web Mode Comparison; 2002; Boyd, C. J., Crawford, S. D., McCabe, S. E., Couper, M. P.
- Experiments on column width spacing in the University of Michigan Student Life Survey; 2001; Boyd, C. J., McCabe, S. E., Couper, M. P., Crawford, S. D.