Web Survey Bibliography
Feeling thermometers are a commonly-used response format that asks respondents to indicate the extent with which they experience a particular feeling using a 0 to 100 scale, typically by saying or writing the number down. As such, they are easily implemented in telephone, paper, and web-based surveys. Many researchers believe that a feeling thermometer represents ratio scale measurement and is superior to other ordinal scales, though Brady (1985) pointed out the problem of inter-person comparability in using feeling thermometers. In a series of 4 web-based studies with over 100,000 U.S. respondents, we compared the relative effectiveness of feeling thermometers with other response formats that use single response scales with 5 to 7 response categories with end-anchored or fully-anchored (response labels for each category) response formats. Though 3 of the studies focused on political ratings (liking for various political figures), 1 study used the measures to assess attitudes toward various large industries. Respondents were randomly assigned to response format. We examined extent of scale differentiation, scale extremity use, and proportion of middling responses for each response format. We further analyzed the correspondence of the measures with other measures (including party ID). We generally found no superiority of the feeling thermometers in predicting behaviors towards each topic, and some slight superiority of fully-labeled response formats over feeling thermometers in concurrent-related validity. Response patterns for fully-anchored formats were quite different from end-anchored formats and the feeling thermometers, which we relate to the differences in validity we obtained.
Conference Homepage (abstract)
Web survey bibliography - Bremer, J. (11)
- Data Quality Standards in Mixed Mode Surveys; 2015; Bremer, J.; Barbulescu, M.; Bennett, J.
- Thinking Differently About How to Select Respondents for Surveys; 2012; Terhanian, G., Bremer, J.
- A Smarter Way to Select Respondents for Surveys; 2012; Terhanian, G., Bremer, J.
- I Got a Feeling: Comparison of Feeling Thermometers with Verbally Labeled Scales in Attitude Measurement...; 2012; Thomas, R. K., Bremer, J.
- How Likely?: Comparisons of Behavioral Intention Measurement Validity; 2012; Bremer, J., Thomas, R. K.
- Propensity Score Matching to Correct Telephone Surveys for Cell Phone Nonresponse; 2009; Bremer, J.
- Truth in measurement: Comparing Web Based interviewing Techniques; 2007; Couper, M. P., Terhanian, G., Bremer, J., Thomas, R. K.
- Generalizability Issues in Internet-Based Survey Research: Implications for the Internet Addiction Controversy...; 2002; Bremer, J.
- The record of internet-based opinion polls in predicting the results of 72 races in the November 2000...; 2001; Taylor, H., Bremer, J., Overmeyer, C., Siegel, J. W., Terhanian, G.
- Using Internet polling to forecast the 2000 elections; 2001; Terhanian, G., Taylor, H., Bremer, J., Overmeyer, C., Siegel, J. W.
- Update on the Internet Usage Survey; 1997; Bremer, J.