Notice: the WebSM website has not been updated since the beginning of 2018.

Web Survey Bibliography

Title Dropout Rates and Response Times of an Occupation Search Tree in a Web Survey
Year 2014
Access date 13.04.2014
Full text

PDF (249 kb)

Abstract

Occupation is key in socioeconomic research. As in other survey modes, most web surveys use an open-ended question for occupation, though the absence of interviewers elicits unidentifiable or aggregated responses. Unlike other modes, web surveys can use a search tree with an occupation database. They are hardly ever used, but this may change due to technical advancements. This article evaluates a three-step search tree with 1,700 occupational titles, used in the 2010 multilingual WageIndicator web survey for UK, Belgium and Netherlands (22,990 observations). Dropout rates are high; in Step 1 due to unemployed respondents judging the question not to be adequate, and in Step 3 due to search tree item length. Median response times are substantial due to search tree item length, dropout in the next step and invalid occupations ticked. Overall the validity of the occupation data is rather good, 1.7-7.5% of the respondents completing the search tree have ticked an invalid occupation.

Access/Direct link

JOS - (Abstract)/ (Full text)

Year of publication2014
Bibliographic typeJournal article
Print