Web Survey Bibliography
Relevance & Research Question: Rewards are ubiquitous in online research. In online access panels the type and value of rewards may not be known to the client. It is generally believed that rewards boost response rates. However response rates in online research are simply poor, with or without rewards. The value to the online access panel supplier is economic not methodological. With increased price compression in online sampling it is timely to consider the methodological implications of manipulating reward levels downwards.
Methods & Data: 20 treatments were undertaken; 5 reward levels by 4 interview lengths. Two cases of zero rewards were considered – one, the reward level is simply absent, the other clearly stated 0 points would be given. Matched samples of 2000 per cell were invited to the study. The body of the questionnaire was a battery to measure altruism (Rushton et al), a series of statements relating to attitudes to survey taking and rewards along with perception questions of the rewards on offer.
Results: The results demonstrated only marginal gains in response resulted from substantial increases in rewards levels. E.g. doubling the incentive from $5 to $10 increased response by a mere 14%. This is partly due to the invisibility of rewards. Only 60% thought they knew how much reward they were getting and, of these, only 60% were correct in their estimate. At the same time sample profiles, in terms of distribution of levels of altruism, were unaffected by rewards or interview length. Whilst this holds out promise for reducing rewards spend without impacting response or sample psychographics it does leave as an open question the problem of expectation of rewards – which is being set at the recruitment stage. We may then “get away” with reducing rewards in the short term, it may have a catastrophic long term impact unless we find new ways of recruiting respondents. That itself may have much more far reaching consequences for sample compositions.
Added Value: This paper enables researchers to make informed choices about rewards; not only the impact on response rates but also sample composition over and above demographics.
GOR Homepage (abstract) / (presentation)
Web survey bibliography (457)
- Handbook of Research Methods in Health Social Sciences; 2017; Liamputtong, P.
- Necessary but Insufficient: Why Measurement Invariance Tests Need Online Probing as a Complementary...; 2017; Meitinger, K.
- Device and Internet Use among Spanish-dominant Hispanics: Implications for Web Survey Design and Testing...; 2017; Trejo, Y. A. G.; Schoua-Glusberg, A.
- Role of online survey tools in creating temporally accurate Environmental Product Declarations (EPD)...; 2017; Ganguly, I.; Bowers, T.; Pierobon, F.; Eastin, I.
- CAQDAS at a Crossroads: Affordances of Technology in an Online Environment; 2017; Silver, C.; Bulloch, L. S.
- Development and Pilot Test of a Mobile Application for Field Data Collection; 2016; Chiappetta, L.; Kerr, M. M.
- A streamlined approach to online linguistic surveys; 2016; Erlewine, M. Y.; Kotek, H.
- The Effects of Vignette Placement on Attitudes Toward Supporting Family Members; 2016; Lau, C. Q., Seltzer, J. A., Bianchi, S. M.
- Using Web Panels to Quantify the Qualitative: The National Center for Health Statistics Research and...; 2016; Scanlon, P. J.
- Bees to Honey or Flies to Manure? How the Usual Subject Recruitment Exacerbates the Shortcomings of...; 2016; Snell, S. A., Hillygus, D. S.
- The Use of a Nonprobability Internet Panel to Monitor Sexual and Reproductive Health in the General...; 2015; Legleye, S; Charrance, G.; Razafindratsima, N.; Bajos, N.; Bohet, A.; Moreau, C.
- GreenBook Research Industry Trends Report; 2015; Murphy, L. (Ed.)
- Does Sequence Matter in Multimode Surveys: Results from an Experiment; 2014; Wagner, J., Arrieta, J., Guyer, H., Ofstedal, M. B.
- The Use of Cognitive Interviewing Methods to Evaluate Mode Effects in Survey Questions; 2014; Gray, M., Blake, M., Campanelli, P.
- Build your own social network laboratory with Social Lab: a tool for research in social media; 2014; Garaizar, P., Reips, U.-D.
- Using Eye Tracking to Evaluate Email Notifications of Surveys and Online Surveys Collecting Address...; 2014; Olmsted, E. L., Nichols, E. M.
- Correlates of Attrition in the German Internet Panel: Drop-Outs and Sleepers; 2014; Blom, A. G., Beissel-Durrant, G.
- Survey Breakoff in Online Panels; 2014; McCutcheon, A. L.
- Inside the Turk Understanding Mechanical Turk as a Participant Pool; 2014; Paolacci, G., Chandler, J.
- Nonresponse and measurement error in an online panel; 2014; Roberts, C., Allum, N., Sturgis, P.
- Estimating the effects of nonresponses in online panels through imputation; 2014; Zhang, W.
- Professional respondents in nonprobability online panels; 2014; Hillygus, D. S., Jackson, N. M., Young, M.
- Informing panel members about study results; 2014; Scherpenzeel, A., Toepoel, V.
- Determinants of the starting rate and the completion rate in online panel studies; 2014; Goeritz, A.
- The untold story of multi-mode (online and mail) consumer panels; 2014; McCutcheon, A. L., Rao, K., Kaminska, O.
- Online panels and validity; 2014; Groenlund, K., Strandberg, K.
- Assessing representativeness of a probability-based online panel in Germany; 2014; Struminskaya, B., Kaczmirek, L., Schaurer, I., Bandilla, W.
- A critical review of studies investigating the quality of data obtained with online panels based on...; 2014; Callegaro, M., Villar, A., Yeager, D. S., Krosnick, J. A.
- Online panel research: History, concepts, applications and a look at the future; 2014; Callegaro, M., Baker, R., Bethlehem, J., Goeritz, A., Krosnick, J. A., Lavrakas, P. J.
- Motives for joining nonprobability online panels and their association with survey participation behavior...; 2014; Keusch, F., Batinic, B., Mayerhofer, W.
- Targeting the bias – the impact of mass media attention on sample composition and representativeness...; 2014; Steinmetz, S., Oez, F., Tijdens, K. G.
- Exploring selection biases for developing countries - is the web a promising tool for data collection...; 2014; Tijdens, K. G., Steinmetz, S.
- The quality of ego-centered social network data in web surveys: experiments with a visual elicitation...; 2014; Marcin, B., Matzat, U., Snijders, C.
- Switching the polarity of answer options within the questionnaire and using various numbering schemes...; 2014; Struminskaya, B., Schaurer, I., Bosnjak, M.
- Measuring the very long, fuzzy tail in the occupational distribution in web-surveys; 2014; Tijdens, K. G.
- Interest Bias – An Extreme Form of Self-Selection?; 2014; Cape, P. J., Reichert, K.
- Online Qualitative Research – Personality Matters ; 2014; Tress, F., Doessel, C.
- Recent Books and Journals in Public Opinion, Survey Methods, and Survey Statistics; 2014; Callegaro, M.
- Does Gamification Work? - A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification ; 2014; Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., Sarsa, H.
- The Use of Paradata to Predict Future Cooperation in a Panel Study; 2014; Funke, F., Goeritz, A.
- Pret met panels [Fun online]; 2013; Roberts, A., de Leeuw, E. D., Hox, J., Klausch, L. T., de Jongh, A.
- The Short-term Campaign Panel of the German Longitudinal Election Study 2009. Design, Implementation...; 2013; Steinbrecher, M., Rossmann, J.
- The Future of Social Media, Sociality, and Survey Research; 2013; Hill, C., Dever, J. A.
- Second Life as a Survey Lab: Exploring the Randomized Response Technique in a Virtual Setting; 2013; Richards, A., Dean, E.
- Virtual Cognitive Interviewing Using Skype and Second Life; 2013; Dean, E., Head, B., Swicegood, J. E.
- Social Media, Sociality, and Survey Research; 2013; Hill, C., Dean, E., Murphy, J.
- Investigation of background acoustical effect on online surveys: A case study of a farmers' market...; 2013; Tang, Xi.
- Should the third reminder be sent? The role of survey response timing on web survey results; 2013; Rao, K., Pennington, J.
- Web panel surveys – can they be designed and used in a scientifically sound way?; 2013; Svensson, J.
- Using an Item Response Theory Approach to Measure Survey Mode of Administration Effects: Analysis of...; 2013; Mariano, L. T., Elliott, M. N.