Relevance & Research Question:
Pre-testing survey instruments is a widely accepted method to test a survey before fielding it to the full sample. There are several advantages of pretesting an online survey, e.g., to collect information regarding survey responses or technical problems, to name only a few.
This study addresses the following questions:
(1) Is pre-testing used before fielding the online survey instrument to the full sample?
(2) Does frequency influence the usage of online survey tools and pre-testing?
(3) Are there differences in usage behavior across different areas (e.g. government, academic, non-profit or for-profit)?
(4) How large is the pretest sample?
Methods & Data:
Data has been collected via a web survey among users of LimeSurvey from July 2009 to October 2011. Of 40,663 responders 14,622 answered the question if they ever ran a pre-test or not. Analyses were conducted using descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations and related statistical tests.
Results:
The core result is that pre-testing online surveys before fielding it to the full sample is now an established method:
(1) Around 65.9% of online survey tool users occasionally or always run a trial survey (pre-test) before fielding it to the full sample.
(2) There is a u-shaped significant relationship between usage frequency of online survey tools and conducting a pre-test (…).
(3) The amount of pre-tests is highest among academic users (62.9%) and lowest among governmental users (58.3%).
(4) Around 64.5 percent of online survey tool users conducted a pre-test using a pre-test sample size of between 1 and 100 cases.
Added Value:
The results of this study provide insights to pre-testing online survey tools. Despite the fact that nearly two-third of online survey tool users are running pre-tests with between 1 and 100 participants, there is potential for the remaining one third of customers to improve their quality of online surveys through pre-testing. Overall, this should lead to a higher acceptance of online surveys.