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Web Survey Bibliography

Title Impact of Field Period Length in the Estimates of Sexual Victimization in a Web-based Survey of College Females
Year 2016
Access date 09.06.2016
Abstract
When administering a survey on a sensitive topic, such as sexual victimization, one needs to be concerned about the potential for bias due to the length of the survey’s field period. If persons who have a greater interest in the survey topic (e.g., because they are victims) are more likely to respond quickly then a short field period may lead to upwardly biased results. However, a long field period may negatively impact estimates when there is a fixed starting point for the reference year (e.g., beginning of the academic year) because the reference period for early responders is shorter than the reference period for late responders. The Campus Climate Survey Validation Study (CCSVS) Pilot Test , sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Office of Violence Against Women, was a web-based survey administered at nine colleges interested in measuring the prevalence and incidence of sexual victimization among undergraduate students during the 2014-15 academic year. The survey, administered at the end of the Spring 2015 semester, was in the field for approximately 60 days at each school even though almost all schools achieved their targeted sample size within 28 days. In this paper we present a comparison of the estimates for key sexual victimization outcomes based on three different field periods. We found that early and late responders did not differ for the key outcomes of interest. We discuss how the use of incentives and other strategies in the CCSVS may have contributed to mitigating potential bias in terms of how long it took victims and non-victims to decide to participate in the survey. Furthermore, we look at how response rates varied by the different field period lengths and the impact that shorter field periods would have had on design effects after adjusting for nonresponse.
 
Year of publication2016
Bibliographic typeConferences, workshops, tutorials, presentations
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