Web Survey Bibliography
Satisficing response behavior is a widely recognized hazard in Web surveys because interview supervision is limited in absence of a human interviewer. Therefore, it is important to devise methods which help to identify satisficing. Some authors have recently proposed to use response latencies as a measure of how much cognitive effort respondents devote to answer survey questions (e.g. Callegaro et al. 2004). Following this line of reasoning, exceptionally short response latencies are conceived as an indication of low cognitive effort, i.e. satisficing, while longer response times indicate more careful cognitive processing. Based on these considerations, this paper discusses several approaches to identify satisficing respondents which make use of the interview duration and response latencies. These paradata have the advantage that they can be used as unobtrusive and direct measures of the depth of cognitive processing. Using data from a cross-sectional Web survey with respondents from a non-probability online panel, indicators for response behaviors are constructed which are commonly assumed to result from satisficing, e.g. non-differentiation in matrix questions or frequently choosing the DK option. Then, analyses are performed to examine whether the response time-based approaches are suited to identify satisficing respondents. Lastly, the results are compared in order to assess which of the approaches performs best. The paper concludes with a discussion and critical reflection of using response time-based approaches in the identification of satisficing and points out further research desiderata.
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Web survey bibliography - Rossmann, J. (9)
- Why Do Respondents Break Off Web Surveys and Does It Matter? Results From Four Follow-up Surveys; 2014; Rossmann, J., Blumenstiel, J. E., Steinbrecher, M.
- Using Paradata to Predict and to Correct for Panel Attrition in a Web-based Panel Survey; 2014; Rossmann, J., Gummer, T.
- The Short-term Campaign Panel of the German Longitudinal Election Study 2009. Design, Implementation...; 2013; Steinbrecher, M., Rossmann, J.
- Identifying and Mitigating Satisficing in Web Surveys: Some Experimental Evidence; 2013; Rossmann, J.
- Identifying Satisficing Respondents in Web Surveys: A Comparison of Different Response Time-Based Approaches...; 2013; Rossmann, J.
- Interview Duration in Web Surveys: Integrating Different Levels of Explanation; 2013; Rossmann, J., Gummer, T.
- Does Mode Matter? Initial Evidence from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES); 2012; Blumenstiel, J. E., Rossmann, J.
- A new approach to the analysis of survey drop-out. Results from Follow-up Surveys in the German Longitudinal...; 2011; Rossmann, J., Blumenstiel, J. E., Steinbrecher, M.
- Breakoff in Web Surveys of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES); 2010; Blumenstiel, J. E., Roßmann, J., Steinbrecher, M.