Web Survey Bibliography
Despite the best efforts of questionnaire designers, survey respondents don’t always interpret questions as the question writers intended. Researchers have used Grice’s conversational maxims to explain some of these discrepancies. This dissertation extends this work by reviewing studies on the use of Grice’s maxims by survey respondents and describing six new experiments that looked for direct evidence that respondents apply Grice’s maxims. The strongest evidence for respondents’ use of the maxims came from an experiment that varied the numerical labels on a rating scale; the mean shift in responses to the right side of the rating scale induced by negative numerical labels was robust across items and fonts. Process measures indicated that respondents applied the maxim of relation in interpreting the questions. Other evidence supported use of the maxim of quantity — as predicted, correlations between two highly similar items were lower when they were asked together. Reversing the wording of one of the items didn’t prevent respondents from applying the maxim of quantity. Evidence was weaker for the application of Grice’s maxim of manner; respondents still seemed to use definitions (as was apparent from the reduced variation in their answers), even though the definitions were designed to be uninformative. That direct questions without filters induced significantly more responses on the upper end of the scale — presumably because of the presuppositions direct questions carried — supported respondents’ application of the maxim of quality. There was little support for respondents’ use of the maxim of relation from an experiment on the physical layout of survey questions; the three different layouts didn’t influence how respondents perceived the relation among items. These results provided some evidence that both survey “satisficers” and survey “optimizers” may draw automatic inferences based on Gricean maxims, but that only “optimizers” will carry out the more controlled processes requiring extra effort. Practical implications for survey practice include the need for continued attention to secondary features of survey questions in addition to traditional questionnaire development issues. Additional experiments that incorporate other techniques such as eye tracking or cognitive interviews may help to uncover other subtle mechanisms affecting survey responses.
Web survey bibliography (4086)
- Is it Possible to Obtain Equivalent Answers to Scalar Questions in Web and Telephone Surveys?; 2006; Christian, L. M., Dillman, D. A., Smyth, J. D.
- Mail vs. Internet Surveys among Older Persons; 2006; Montenegro, X.
- Open-Ended Questions in Web and Telephone Surveys; 2006; Smyth, J. D., Dillman, D. A., Christian, L. M., McBride, M.
- Experiments in Producing Nonresponse Bias ; 2006; Groves, R. M., Couper, M. P., Presser, S., Singer, E., Tourangeau, R., Piani Acosta, G., Nelson, Li.
- Perceptions of News Credibility about the War in Iraq: Why War Opponents Perceived the Internet as the...; 2006; Choi, J. H., Watt, J. H., Lynch, M.
- The Internet and Anti-War Activism: A Case Study of Information, Expression, and Action; 2006; Nah, S., Veenstra, A. S., Shah, D. V.
- Weighting an Internet Panel Survey on Drug Use and Abuse; 2006; Gordek, H., Williams, Ri. L., Dai, L.
- The Social Science Web Survey System: Moving from 2.0 to 3.0; 2006; Crawford, S. D.
- Dual Frame Web-Telephone Sampling for Rare Groups; 2006; Blair, E., Blair, J.
- Merely Incidental?: Effects of Response Format on Self-reported Behavior; 2006; Thomas, R. K., Klein, J. D.
- The Influence of Web-based Questionnaire Presentation Variations on Survey Cooperation and Perceptions...; 2006; Walston, J. T., Lissitz, R. W., Rudner, L. M.
- Can Web and Mail Survey Modes Improve Participation in an RDD-based National Health Surveillance?; 2006; Link, M. W., Mokdad, A.
- Dropouts on the Web: Effects of Interest and Burden Experienced During an Online Survey; 2006; Galesic, M.
- Web-based methods; 2006; Reips, U.-D.
- Collecting data on alcohol use and alcohol-related victimization: a comparison of telephone and Web-...; 2006; Parks, K. A., Pardi, A. M., Bradizza, C. M.
- Propensity Score Adjustment as a Weighting Scheme for Volunteer Panel Web Surveys; 2006; Lee, Su.
- A study of the suitability of videophones for psychometric assessment; 2006; Demiris, G., Oliver, D., Courtney, K.
- Cash Lotteries as Incentives in Online Panels; 2006; Goeritz, A.
- Privacy, Trust, Disclosure and the Internet; 2006; Paine, C., , Buchanan, T., Reips, U. -D.
- Web Survey Design: Paging versus Scrolling; 2006; Peytchev, A., Couper, M. P., McCabe, S. E., Crawford, S. D.
- The Pass-Along Effect: Investigating Word-of-Mouth Effects on Online Survey Procedures; 2006; Norman, A. T., de Rouvray, C. A., Russell, C. A.
- Putting a Questionnaire on the Web is not Enough # A Comparison of Online and Offline Surveys Conducted...; 2006; Faas, T., Schoen, H.
- Beyond response rates: Effects of different (Web-) survey implementation procedures on sample composition...; 2006; Bosnjak, M., Marcus, B., Schuetz, A., Lindner, S., Pilischenko, S.
- The Transition from University to Work: Web Survey Process Quality; 2006; Quintano, C., Castellano, R., D'Agostino, A.
- Color, Labels, and Interpretive Heuristics for Response Scales; 2006; Tourangeau, R., Couper, M. P., Conrad, F. G.
- The impact of persuasion strategies on the response rate in online surveys: Incentives, foot-in-the-...; 2006; Verheyen, C., Schuebel, C., Moser, K.
- Ethical issues in longitudinal surveys; 2006; Lessof, C.
- An investigation of the effect of lotteries on web survey response rates; 2006; Heerwegh, D.
- Computer-assisted questionnaires may facilitate collection of quality-of-life (QOL) data: At a cost; 2006; Smith, Ad. B., Velikova, G., Wright, E. P., Lynch, P., Selby, P. J.
- Validity of the SDS-17 measure of social desirability in the American context; 2006; Blake, B. F., Valdiserri, J., Neuendorf, K., Nemeth, J.
- Comparing the Generalizability of Online and Mail Surveys in Cross-National Service Quality Research; 2006; Deutskens, E., de Jong, K., de Ruyter, K., Wetzels, M.
- The ethics of research using electronic mail discussion groups; 2005; Kralik, D., Warren, J., Koch, T., Pignone, G., Price, K.
- The Analyses of Domestic Study about Internet Survey; 2005; Rui, L., Tie-ying, S.
- Controlling the Baseline Speed of Respondents: An Empirical Evaluation of Data Treatment Methods of...; 2005; Mayerl, J.
- Determinanten der Rücklaufquote in Online-Panels; 2005; Batanic, B., Moser, K.
- On the cost-efficiency of probability sampling based mail surveys with a Web response option; 2005; Werner, P.
- Expert workshop on mixed mode data collection in comparative social surveys; 2005; Roberts, C.
- The Effect Of A Simultaneous Mixed-Mode (Mail And Web) Survey On Respondent Characteristics And Survey...; 2005; Brennan, M.
- The total survey error approach. A guide to the new science of survey research; 2005; Weisberg, H. F.
- The professional respondent problem in online panel surveys today; 2005; Fulgoni, G.
- Satisficing behavior in online panelists; 2005; Downes-Le Guin, T.
- Reading behavior in the digital environment: Changes in reading behavior over the past ten years; 2005; Liu, Z.
- Rating versus comparative trade-off measures. Trending changes in political issues across time and predictive...; 2005; Thomas, R. K., Behnke, S., Johnson, Al., Sanders, M.
- Publication bias: Recognizing the problem, understanding its origins and scope, and preventing harm; 2005; Dickersin, K.
- Panel proliferation and quality concerns; 2005; Faasse, J.
- Gricean effects in self-administered survey. Ph.D. Dissertation; 2005; Yan, T.
- Drop-down boxes, radio buttons, or fill-in-the-blank? Web survey scale-type effects; 2005
- Does weighting for nonresponse increase the variance of survey means?; 2005; Little, R. J., Vartivarian, S.
- Big scale observations gathered with the help of client side paradata; 2005; Haraldsen, G., Kleven, O., Sundvoll, A.
- User Interface Design and Evaluation ; 2005; Stone, D., Jarrett, C., Woodroffe, M., Minocha, S.