Web Survey Bibliography
Background: Nonresponse to questionnaires can affect the validity of surveys and introduce bias. Offering financial incentives can increase response rates to postal questionnaires, but the effect of financial incentives on response rates to online surveys is less clear.
Objective: As part of a survey, we aimed to test whether knowledge of a financial incentive would increase the response rate to an online questionnaire.
Methods: A randomized controlled trial of 485 UK-based principal investigators of publicly funded health services and population health research. Participants were contacted by email and invited to complete an online questionnaire via an embedded URL. Participants were randomly allocated to groups with either “knowledge of” or “no knowledge of” a financial incentive (£10 Amazon gift voucher) to be provided on completion of the survey. At the end of the study, gift vouchers were given to all participants who completed the questionnaire regardless of initial randomization status. Four reminder emails (sent from the same email address as the initial invitation) were sent out to nonrespondents at one, two, three, and four weeks; a fifth postal reminder was also undertaken. The primary outcome measure for the trial was the response rate one week after the second reminder. Response rate was also measured at the end of weeks one, two, three, four, and five, and after a postal reminder was sent.
Results: In total, 243 (50%) questionnaires were returned (232 completed, 11 in which participation was declined). One week after the second reminder, the response rate in the “knowledge” group was 27% (66/244) versus 20% (49/241) in the “no knowledge” group (χ21 = 3.0, P = .08). The odds ratio for responding among those with knowledge of an incentive was 1.45 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.95 - 2.21). At the third reminder, participants in the “no knowledge” group were informed about the incentive, ending the randomized element of the study. However we continued to follow up all participants, and from reminder three onwards, no significant differences were observed in the response rates of the two groups.
Conclusions: Knowledge of a financial incentive did not significantly increase the response rate to an online questionnaire. Future surveys should consider including a randomized element to further test the utility of offering incentives of other types and amounts to participate in online questionnaires.
Journal of Medical Internet Research - Homepage (abstract) / (full text)
Web survey bibliography - 2010 (251)
- Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk; 2010; Paolacci, G., Chandler, J., Ipeirotis, P. G.
- Making Good Use of Survey Paradata; 2010; Lynn, P., Nicolaas, G.
- Questionnaire Length, Fatigue Effects and Response Quality Revisited; 2010; Cape, P. J.
- Preventing Satisficing in Online Surveys: A “Kapcha” to Ensure Higher Quality Data...; 2010; Chandler, D., Kapelner, A.
- Game on; 2010; Ewing, T.
- Respondent Engagement: How Much Does it Matter?; 2010
- The Internet and Social Inequalities; 2010; Mannon, S.E.; Witte, J. C.
- Need to Improve Routine HIV Testing of U.S. Veterans in Care: Results of an Internet Survey; 2010; Valdiserri, R. O., Nazi, K., McInnes, D. K., Ross, D., Kinsinger, L.
- The Prevalence of Chronic Pain in United States Adults: Results of an Internet-Based Survey; 2010; Johannes, C. B., Le, T. K., Zhou, X., Johnston, J. A., Dworkin, R. H.
- Response Rates in Organizational Science, 1995–2008: A Meta-analytic Review and Guidelines for...; 2010; Anseel, F., Lievens, F., Schollaert, E., Choragwicka, B.
- Marketing Research: Methodological Foundations; 2010; Iacobucci, D., Churchill, G.A. Jr.
- Computer Assisted Interview Testing Tool (CTT) - a review of new features and how the tool has improved...; 2010; Stark, R., Gatward, R.
- Address-based Sampling Nets Success for KnowledgePanel® Recruitment and Sample Representation; 2010; DiSogra, C.
- A method of automated nonparametric content analysis for social science; 2010; Hopkins, D. J., King, G.
- Developing a web explicit research strategy theory in African universities: a cross-comparison of specific...; 2010; Kirigha, K. A., Neema-A.
- The use of paradata to monitor and manage survey data collection; 2010; Kreuter, F., Couper, M. P., Lyberg, L. E.
- Mitigating Online Survey Nonresponse Error In Aviation Research; 2010; Ison, D. C.
- Optimizing response rates in online surveys; 2010; Kaczmirek, L.
- The Decision Maker's Guide to Online Research; 2010
- Mixed-Method Approaches to Social Network Analysis; 2010; Edwards, G.
- Measuring Intent to Participate and Participation in the 2010 Census and Their Correlates and Trends...; 2010; Pasek, J., Krosnick, J. A.
- Nonresponse and Measurement Error in Mobile Phone Surveys ; 2010; Kennedy, C.
- Wordle; 2010; Feinberg, J.
- What it takes to be a top 100 website; 2010
- Total Survey Error: past, present, and future; 2010; Groves, R. M., Lyberg, L. E.
- There is an app for that! A review of smartphone apps for marketing research; 2010; Michelson, M.
- The who, what, and where of America: Understanding the American Community Survey; 2010; Gaquin, D. A.
- The weirdest people in the world?; 2010; Heine, S. J., Henrich, J., Norenzayan, A.
- The state of online research in the U.S.; 2010; Miller, J.
- The psychology or survey response. An ASA webinar; 2010; Tourangeau, R.
- The psychology of survey response, 2nd Edition; 2010; Tourangeau, R., Bradburn, N. M.
- The multidimensional integral business survey response model; 2010; Bavdaz, M.
- The impact of next and back buttons on time to complete and measurement reliability in computer-based...; 2010; Hays, R. D., Bode, R., Rothrock, N., Riley, W., Cella, D., Gershon, R.
- The Gallup Poll: Public opinion 2009; 2010; Gallup, A. M.
- Surveying cultures: Discovering shared conceptions and sentiments; 2010; Heise, D. R.
- Site-intercpet survey best practices; 2010; Henning, J.
- Sampling: design and analysis, 2nd Edition; 2010; Lohr, S. L.
- Research synthesis. AAPOR report on online panels; 2010; Brick, J. M., Baker, R., Blumberg, S. J., Couper, M. P., Courtright, M., Dennis, J. M., Dillman, D....
- Recruiting probability samples for a multi-mode research panel with Internet and mail components; 2010; Rao, K.
- Real ID. State of The Art Representative and Repeatable Online Samples. Behaviorally Profiled Respondents...; 2010; Gittelman, S. H., Trimarchi, E.
- Randomized response and indirect questioning techniques in surveys; 2010; Chaudhuri, A.
- Protecting and accessing data from the survey of earned doctorates: A workshop summary; 2010; Plewes, T. J.
- Paradata: a new data source from web-administered measures; 2010; Sowan, A. K., Jenkins, L. S.
- Overview of data collection methodology; 2010
- On-the-go and in-the-moment. Mobile research offers speed, immediacy; 2010; Pferdekamper, T.
- Mixed-mode surveys; 2010; Dillman, D. A., Messer, B. L.
- Measuring the group quarters population in the American Community Survey: Interim report; 2010; Marton, K., Voss, P. R.
- Measures of interobserver agreement and reliability; 2010; Shoukri, M. M.
- Machines that lean how to code open ended survey data; 2010; Esuli, A., Sebastiani, F.
- Libraries nationwide receiving ALA-APA Library Salary Survey Invitation; 2010; Grady, J.