Web Survey Bibliography
Relevance&Research Question: The increasing popularity of web-surveys has triggered a heated debate about their quality for scientific use. Web-surveys offer advantages such as worldwide coverage, cost benefits and fast data collection, but are mostly not representative. Findings for developed countries consistently show that young highly educated men are overrepresented in web-surveys. While the topic of representativeness has been extensively discussed for developed countries, the question remains whether similar biases can be found for developing countries. This paper aims to explore to what extent web and face-to-face surveys produce reliable data regarding socio-demographic characteristics for eight developing countries (China, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Senegal, Uganda).
Methods&Data: We pooled data of the self-administered WageIndicator web-survey and the representative WageIndicator face-to-face surveys on work and wages (8 countries, 2010-2012, N = 16,026 web-sample; N = 18,392 face-to-face sample). Using logit analysis, the chance of inclusion in the web-sample is explored, testing three hypotheses. Comparing the web and face-to-face samples with population characteristics, we assume that both modes are confronted with the same hard-to-reach groups (H1). We assume that young, high educated, male, single and high income individuals are overrepresented in the web-sample (H2). We assume that these effects will be smaller in countries with a higher internet penetration rate (H3).
Results: Whereas no support is found for hard-to-reach groups (H1), the analysis shows evidence for good-to-reach groups: men and women aged 20-35 are highly overrepresented in both modes. Concerning H2 across all countries we find support that individuals aged 20-24, male, single, high educated and with a high income are more likely to be included in the web-survey. H3 is not supported. In contrast, we find smaller effects of socio-demographic characteristics (except gender) on web-survey participation for low access countries.
Added Value: Considering the problems related to surveying in developing countries web-surveys might be a promising cost- and time-efficient data collection tool to access data of populations so far under researched. This study contributes to the understanding of the nature of bias in volunteer web-surveys. Though Internet access is still low in developing countries, their fast increase makes a growth in web-surveys likely.
Web survey bibliography - Tijdens, K. G. (18)
- Self-identification of occupation in web surveys: requirements for search trees and look-up tables ; 2015; Tijdens, K. G.
- Identifying and correcting question-wording problems: the case of Wageindicator; 2015; Slavec, A., Vehovar, V., Tijdens, K. G.
- WEBDATANET: Innovation and Quality in Web-Based Data Collection ; 2014; Steinmetz, S., Slavec, A., Tijdens, K. G., Reips, U.-D., de Pedraza, P., Popescu, A., Belchior, A., ...,...
- Improving web survey quality; 2014; Steinmetz, S., Bianchi, S. M., Tijdens, K. G., Biffignandi, S.
- 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.
- Measuring the very long, fuzzy tail in the occupational distribution in web-surveys; 2014; Tijdens, K. G.
- Dropout Rates and Response Times of an Occupation Search Tree in a Web Survey; 2014; Tijdens, K. G.
- WEBDATANET: A Network on Web-based Data Collection, Methodological Challenges, Solutions, and Implementation...; 2014; Tijdens, K. G., Steinmetz, S., de Pedraza, P., Serrano, F.
- Challenges and pitfalls of measuring wages via web surveys - some explorations; 2012; Steinmetz, S., Bianchi, A., Tijdens, K., Biffignandi, S.
- Understanding selection bias in a worldwide, volunteer web-survey; 2012; Tijdens, K., Steinmetz, S.
- Hrh remuneration: Comparing wage levels, ranking And dispersion of 16 occupations In the health workforce...; 2011; Tijdens, K., de Vries, D.
- Wages worldwide results and measurement issues from the multi-country. WageIndicator web-survey ; 2011; van Klaveren, M., Tijdens, K.
- Text string matching to measure occupations in web-surveys; 2011; Tijdens, K. G.
- Codebook and explanatory note on the WageIndicator dataset ; 2010; Tijdens, K., van Zijl, S., Hughie-Williams, M., van Klaveren, M., Steinmetz, S.
- Potentials and Constraints of Propensity Score Weighting to Improve Web Survey Quality; 2010; Steinmetz, S., Tijdens, K.
- Presentation of WEBSURVNET; 2009; de Pedraza, P., Steinmetz, S., Tijdens, K.
- Sample bias, weights and efficiency of weights in a continuous web voluntary survey; 2007; de Pedraza, P., Tijdens, K., de Bustillo, R.