In 2008, Knowledge Networks expanded KnowledgePanel to create KnowledgePanel Latino, the first nationally representative online sample of Latinos in the U.S. We have observed that the Spanishlanguage panelists take more time to self-administer their Spanish-language online questionnaires than those taking the English version – both Latinos and non-Latinos range 50% to 100% longer. For example, in our 2009 demographic profile survey, median completion length is 8 minutes among roughly 40,000

English-language panelists, while 21 minutes among roughly 2,000 Spanish-language panelists. This pattern holds for different survey topics and has practical implications for respondent burden, respondent incentives and costs.

To our knowledge, this is a new finding, as there are no published research findings on these differences in online surveys.

We will evaluate several possible explanations for this finding: longer Spanish questionnaires in terms of word count; skip patterns, respondent demographics (e.g., education, age, household size), cultural differences, panel tenure, Internet connection speed, and survey-taking behavior. We employ regression to estimate the effects of survey language, demographics, panel tenure, and type of Internet connection on survey completion time.

Our regression results show that education, age, and broadband internet connection have large effects and significantly reduce survey completion time. However, once several factors have been controlled, Spanish-language survey takers still take, on average, 7 minutes longer than their English-language counterparts to complete the main demographic profile survey. Spanish survey language still remains a strong predictor of administration length, which may speak to cultural differences and survey taking behaviors, which we will further investigate in this paper.