Web Survey Bibliography
For several years we have been investigating how various ways of communicating disclosure risk and harm to respondents affects their willingness to participate in surveys. These experiments, which used vignettes administered to an online panel as well as a mail survey sent to a national probability sample, have demonstrated that (a) the probability of disclosure alone has no apparent effect on people’s willingness to participate in the survey described, (b) the sensitivity of the survey topic has such an effect, and (c) making explicit the possible harms that might result from disclosure also reduces willingness to participate, in both the vignette and the mail experiments. As a last study in this series we experimented with different ways of talking about disclosure risk in informed consent statements that might more plausibly be used in real surveys, again using vignettes. The study used a 4 (topic) x 6 (confidentiality assurance) design. Two of the topics were sensitive (sex, money) and two were not (work, leisure time). The confidentiality statement assured confidentiality “except as required by law” or “to the fullest extent of the law” or gave an estimated probability of disclosure (one in a million). Three of the statements contained, in addition, the following reassurance: “In our experience at the Survey Research Center, no one, to the best of our knowledge, has ever been harmed through a breach of confidentiality.” Mode (face-to-face), sponsor (National Institutes of Health), length (15 minutes) and incentive ($5) were kept constant across the 24 vignettes. The survey was administered to 7200 members of an online panel by Market Strategies Inc. The presentation analyzes the main and interactive effects of topic sensitivity, type of assurance, and
reassurance on the basis of experience on subjects’ willingness to participate in the survey described.
Conference Homepage (abstract)
Web survey bibliography - Singer, E. (17)
- Informed Consent for Web Paradata Use; 2013; Couper, M. P., Singer, E.
- Incentives for college student participation in web-based substance use surveys; 2013; Patrick, M. E., Singer, E., Boyd, C. J., Cranford, J. A., McCabe, S. E.
- The Use and Effects of Incentives in Surveys; 2012; Singer, E.
- The Uses of Open-Ended Questions in Quantitative Surveys; 2011; Singer, E., Couper, M. P.
- Toward a Benefit-Cost Theory of Survey Participation: Evidence, Further Tests, and Implications; 2011; Singer, E.
- Communicating Disclosure Risk in Informed Consent Statements; 2010; Singer, E., Couper, M. P.
- Ethical Considerations in the Use of Paradata in Web Surveys; 2009; Couper, M. P., Singer, E.
- Survey Methodology (Wiley Series in Survey Methodology); 2009; Groves, R. M., Fowler, F. J., Couper, M. P., Lepkowski, J. M., Singer, E., Tourangeau, R.
- Privacy, confidentiality, and response burden as factors in telephone survey nonresponse; 2008; Singer, E., Presser, S.
- Introduction nonresponse bias in household surveys ; 2006; Singer, E.
- Experiments in Producing Nonresponse Bias ; 2006; Groves, R. M., Couper, M. P., Presser, S., Singer, E., Tourangeau, R., Piani Acosta, G., Nelson, Li.
- Does Voice Matter? An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Experiment; 2004; Couper, M. P., Singer, E., Tourangeau, R.
- Methods for Testing and Evaluating Survey Questions; 2004; Presser, S., Couper, M. P., Lessler, J. T., Martin, E., Martin, J., Rothgeb, J. M., Singer, E.
- Understanding the effects of audio-CASI on self-reports of sensitive behavior; 2003; Couper, M. P., Singer, E., Tourangeau, R.
- The use of incentives to reduce nonresponse household surveys; 2002; Singer, E.
- Leverage-saliency theory of survey participation; 2000; Groves, R. M., Singer, E., Corning, A.
- The Effect of Incentives on Response Rates in Interviewer-Mediated Surveys; 1999; Singer, E., van Hoewyk, J., Gebler, N., Raghunathan, T., McGonagle, K.