Web Survey Bibliography
Many surveys being conducted today for academic research, government policy-making, and marketing collect data via the Internet from groups of respondents who volunteered to answer questions regularly, rather than from random samples of individuals who were selected using the scientific methods that have dominated survey research for decades. This paper compares the accuracy of results obtained from 18 such opt-in online “panels” with the results obtained from respondents selected randomly from the population who answered questions either via the Internet or via face-to-face interviewing. The nonprobability samples yielded less accurate estimates of proportions and notably different relations between variables than did the probability samples, and these differences were not eliminated by weighting. These findings reinforce the value of scientific, random sampling to permit generalizing research findings to a larger population. These findings suggest that the marketing community should pay more attention to and provide elaborate and honest descriptions of the nature of survey samples, to allow consumers of the data to assess their likely accuracy.
Web survey bibliography - Statistics Netherlands (11)
- Establishing the accuracy of online panels for survey research; 2016; Bruggen, E.; van den Brakel, J.; Krosnick, J. A.
- Predictive inference for non-probability samples: a simulation study ; 2016; Buelens, B.; Burger, J.; van den Brakel, J.
- The use of within-subject experiments for estimating measurement effects in mixed-mode surveys ; 2014; Klausch, L. T., Schouten, B., Hox, J.
- Measuring well-being: An analysis of different response scales; 2014; van Beuningen, J., van der Houwen, K., Moonen, L.
- The impact of contact effort and interviewer performance on mode-specific nonresponse and measurement...; 2014; Schouten, B., Cobben, F., van der Laan, J., Arends, J.
- Adaptive survey designs to minimize survey mode effects. A case study on the Dutch Labour Force Survey...; 2013; Calinescu, M., Schouten, B.
- Using response probabilities for assessing representativity; 2012; Bethlehem, J.
- Disentangling Mode-Specific Selection and Measurement Bias in Social Surveys; 2012; Buelens, B., van der Laan, J., Schouten, B., Klausch, L. T., van der Brakel, J., Burger, J.
- Inference in surveys with sequential mixed-mode data collection; 2011; Buelens, B., van der Brakel, J.
- The rise of survey sampling; 2009; Bethlehem, J.
- How accurate are self-selection web surveys?; 2008; Bethlehem, J.