Web Survey Bibliography
When people are asked to make comparative judgments, the direction of comparison has been found to influence the result of the comparisons. Comparing A to B often does not yield comparable results from comparing B to A. There are a number of ways comparative questions can be worded, but is there a more robust one? Our results suggest that there may be.
In this study, questions about whether industry or traffic contribute more to air pollution, whether TV or newspaper does a better job reporting news, and whether other people or oneself has more luck in life were asked in three formats. In the unidirectional comparison format, one of the compared objects served as the subject of the comparison while the other served as the referent (i.e. Does industry contribute more or less to air pollution than traffic?). In the balanced directional comparison format, two directional comparisons were presented such that both objects had a chance to be the subject or referent of the comparisons (i.e. Does industry contribute more to air pollution than traffic, traffic contribute more to air pollution than industry, or do they contribute about the same to air pollution?). In the third, non-directional comparison format, a comparison is framed such that neither objects clearly served as the subject or referent of the comparison (i.e. Which of the following two sources contribute more to air pollution, traffic or industry?). Within each format, two versions were constructed to control for order effects.
250 college students participated in an online experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to each of the six conditions when they logged on to the web site.
Preliminary analysis of the data partially supported previous findings of direction of comparison effect. The data also suggest that non-directional comparison yields less biased results than the other two formats.
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Web survey bibliography - The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) 58th Annual Conference, 2003 (20)
- Determining the Probability of Selection for a Telephone Household in a Random Digit Dial Sample Design...; 2003; Triplett, T. A., Abi-Habib, N.
- Validations in Web-based Surveys; 2003; Crawford, S. D., Peytchev, A.
- Use and non-use of clarification features in web surveys; 2003; Tourangeau, R., P., Couper, M. P., Conrad, F. G., Baker, R. P.
- Asking Comparative Questions: A Comparison Of Three Wording Strategies; 2003; Liu, K.
- It's Only Incidental: Effects of Response Format in Determining Behavioral or Event Occurrence; 2003; Lafond, C. R., Smith, M. R., Behnke, C. S., Thomas, R. K.
- Achieving high response rates on web-based surveys of post-secondary students; 2003; Nichols, L. B., Ghadialy, R.
- Design implementation of a Multimode Web Survey; 2003; Wine, S. J., Cominole, M. B., Carwile, D. S., Perry, K.
- Partnering with a Newspaper to Assess Community Opinion Online; 2003; Downs, E. P., Lindley, A. M.
- Implementing a Web Survey Administration System at the GAO; 2003; Feldesman, A. G.
- Using Internet-Based Surveys With Physicians, What Works and What Doesn't Work; 2003; Schneiderman, M., Thran, S., Adams, C., Lerner, B.
- Exploring Online Survey Metodologies: Who are the Respondents and How to Get them to respond; 2003; Wolter-Warmerdam, K., Gardinali, A. P., Wong, R.
- Using RGI (Respondent Generated Interval) to gather factual information in a web survey; 2003; Lusinchi, D.
- Can What We Don’t Know (about “Don’t Know”) Hurt Us?: Effects of Item Non-response...; 2003; Krosnick, J. A., Behnke, C. S., Lafond, C. R., Thomas, R. K.
- What They See Is What We Get: Response Options for Web Surveys; 2003; Couper, M. P., Tourangeau, R., Conrad, F. G., Crawford, S. D.
- Web Survey Design: Comparing Static and Interactive Survey Instruments; 2003; Nyiri, Z., Clark, L. R.
- Comparing Web-Based Survey Methods with other Approaches: An examination of health knowledge, opinion...; 2003; Greiling, K. A., McCarrier, P. K., Stringer, M. C.
- The role of issue involvement in UK public attitudes to the single European currency; 2003; Roberts, E. C.
- Partipation in Online Surveys: Results from a Series of Experiments; 2003; Kiniorski, A. K., R.Smith, M. R.
- Does Order Really Make a Difference? The Impact of Respondent and Question Characteristics on Response...; 2003; O'Neill, G.
- Cognitive processes in Web Surveys; 2002; Fuchs, M.