Web Survey Bibliography

Title How web surveys differ from other kinds of user interfaces
Author Ehlen, P., Schober, M. F., Conrad, F. G.
Source The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) 58th Annual Conference, 2003
Year 2003
Access date 10.05.2004
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Abstract Interacting with a web survey differs in important ways from interacting with other user interfaces, and so different principles of user interface design may apply. Web surveys belong to the class of tasks where the main goal is for the user to provide information to the system (e.g., filing taxes on-line, registering new purchases with manufacturers); the more usually-studied systems are ones where the main goal is for the user to obtain information from the system, as in most web searches and in help systems. Users providing information to systems may be less concerned with understanding terms precisely, and less willing to request clarification, than users obtaining information from systems. In this study we examine whether users seek clarification of words in survey questions differently than they do for the same words in a web database retrieval task. In a laboratory experiment, two groups of participants carried out almost identical web-based tasks using the same set of fictional scenarios about purchases and housing, with the same set of standard definitions of terms (words like “bedroom” and “moving”) available for them to request by clicking. The survey group answered questions using these terms taken from ongoing US government surveys (e.g., how many bedrooms are in a house, or whether expenses for moving had been incurred). The database group retrieved information from a numerical table in order to complete a subsequent task (e.g., to determine the price of an apartment based on the number of bedrooms, or to determine the amount of reimbursement that a moving expense allowed). Preliminary results indicate that participants were less likely to click for definitions in survey responses than in the database retrieval task. We propose that motivating web survey respondents to understand questions requires a more sophisticated view of the nature of the task.
Access/Direct link Homepage - conference (abstract)
Year of publication2003
Bibliographic typeConferences, workshops, tutorials, presentations
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Web Survey Bibliography - The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) 58th Annual Conference, 2003 (45)