While developing CAWI instruments, German official statistics strives to meet high demands in comprehensibility, functionality and usability in order to increase survey data quality. In addition to qualitative pretesting under laboratory conditions, server- or client-side paradata might prove beneficial for gaining deeper insights into respondents' completion behavior in the field and identifying critical aspects of the online questionnaire in need for fundamental revision. However, Destatis has not used this method yet.
Going through the scenario of a possible implementation, methodological, legal and technical considerations are combined to an integrative assessment of cost, benefit and general feasibility. Of major concern are practical challenges like how to reconcile the desired informative value of paradata and the best possible online tool performance with strict data protection rules. Finally, some gaps in the existing knowledge about web survey paradata are indicated that provide useful points of departure for future research.