Web Survey Bibliography
This paper investigates the relationship between blank and non-blank email subject lines on levels of response to a solicitation to participate in an interview, and on participation in a web survey. Email use has grown substantially in recent years, presenting significant opportunity to the empiricist seeking research respondents. However, response to emails may be low because growth in the sheer volume of messages that individuals receive per day has led to a sense of ‘email overload’, and faced with the challenge of personal email management, many recipients choose to ignore some messages, or do not read them all fully. Drawing on information gap theory, we expected that sending an invitation with a blank subject line would induce a sense of curiosity in recipients that would improve email response and willingness to participate in research studies. However, findings from research with two samples with different propensities to participate in research (academics and business owners) revealed that an email invitation with a blank subject line does not increase overall response rates to a web survey and a face-to-face interview over either an informative subject line or a provocative subject line, but that it does prompt a greater number of active refusals. Based on this finding, recommendations for researchers are outlined.
Web survey bibliography - International Journal of Social Research Methodology (13)
- Incorporating eye tracking into cognitive interviewing to pretest survey questions; 2016; Neuert, C.; Lenzner, T.
- Participant recruitment and data collection through Facebook: the role of personality factors; 2016; Rife, S. C.; Cate, K. L.; Kosinski, M.; Stillwell, D.
- Presentation matters: how mode effects in item non-response depend on the presentation of response options...; 2016; Zeglovits, E.; Schwarzer, S.
- Email subject lines and response rates to invitations to participate in a web survey and a face-to-face...; 2015; Sappleton, N.; Lourenco, F.
- The quality of responses to grid questions as used in Web questionnaires (compared with paper questionnaires...; 2015; Dominguez, J. A.; de Rada, V. D.
- PDAs in socio-economic surveys: instrument bias, surveyor bias or both?; 2013; Escobal, J., Benites, S.
- IVR and web administration in structured interviews utilizing rating scales: exploring the role of motivation...; 2011; Yang, Y., Callegaro, M., Bhola, D. S., Dillman, D. A.
- Item non-response rates: a comparison of online and paper questionnaires ; 2009; Denscombe, M.
- Having their say: email interviews for research data collection with people who have verbal communication...; 2009; Ison, N.
- Quality Criteria for Quantitative, Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research: A View from Social Policy...; 2008; Bryman, A., Becker, S., Sempik, J.
- The effect of personalization on response rates and data quality in web surveys; 2005; Heerwegh, D., Vanhove, T., Matthijs, K., Loosveldt, G.
- Computer software and qualitative analysis: trends, issues and resources; 2000; Lee, R. M., Esterhuizen, L.
- 'Once would be enough': some reflections on the issue of safety for lone researchers ; 1999; Kenyon, E., Hawker, S.