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Web Survey Bibliography

Title Question Order Effect: A Web Survey Experiment with Paradata
Year 2012
Access date 30.08.2012
Abstract

Bishop, Hippler, Schwarz, and Strack (1988) asked two parallel questions on imports in both orders in a telephone survey and found there was a large change in the answers in the two orders. However, the order effect was eliminated in mail surveys. A replication of this study by Sangster (1993) found the order effect in both modes. The different findings in the two studies are thought by some to be due to a difference in the study population. That is, students as used in Bishop et al. answered the surveys more as taking a test, and were more likely to review and change answers. We tried to find some new evidence about the question order effect by collecting paradata (use of “previous” button, change of answers, etc.) in a web survey. We expected that when respondents could easily change their answers, the apparent question order effect would be diminished. We varied the difficulty of reviewing and revising answers by placing the paired questions: 1) on the same screen; 2) on adjacent screens; 3) three screens apart with irrelevant questions in between; or 4) nine questions apart with irrelevant questions in between. These four conditions were tested in a web experiment.

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Year of publication2012
Bibliographic typeConferences, workshops, tutorials, presentations
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Web survey bibliography - Tourangeau, R. (45)