Chapter 9: Programming the survey Flashcards
Which is more important, survey lay-out or survey instruments and why?
- Survey instruments, research shows little evidence of the effect of layout of the survey.
What might lead to higher response rates? Automatic or manual login and why?
- Automatic login - probably because less effort is needed from the respondent in the first case
What is a scrolling design in web surveys?
Scrolling design is all questions on one page
What ia a paging design in web surveys?
- One question per page
What are the four reasons to use a scrolling design and not paging (recommended)
- in very short questionnaires
- When context is important,
- When there is little routing or skip options and
- when item non-response is no problem or answers are mandatory
What is are 2 advantages of scrolling design?
- Respondents can see length of the survey
2. Because similarity to paper-based surveys, minimal differential measurement errors due to mode differences
What are 3 disadvantages of a scrolling design
- Close browser before submitting means no data is stored
- Checks and routing are more difficult to use
- Higher item-non response and shorter completion times
What are the 2 advantages and one disadvantage of a paging design?
- Answers are saved, allowing to stop and continue
- Easily customization of text, randomization, feedback, automatized skips and so on
- disadvantage: one can not see entire survey length, possibly scaring people off
What is a Grid/Matrix survey design?
- Multiple items on one screen but not all
What are advantages and disadvantages of matrix/grid design?
- Advantage: reduces number of screens and amount of scrolling
- Disadvantage: sometimes higher inter-item correlation because people see them as more related because they are grouped together
In General, what should the welcome screen contain? (5)
- Where the survey is from
- What the survey is about
- Privacy and confidentiallity
- Estimated time to complete
- As short as possible
What is your foveal view and why is this important in survey design?
- Small visual field with a visual span of about 8 characters
- Bring this into the visual working memory allows for more ease recalling thus answering more often in the desired format
What are different answer formats (6)
- Radio buttons
- Checkboxes
- Drop-down menu’s
- Slider bars and visual analogue scales
- Text fields
- Grids/Matrices
- Labelling of scalar questions
What is a radio button
- Round button that can be clicked on to provide an answer
what is a checkbox
Swuares that can be ticked to provide an answer
What is important when designing / using radio buttons? (3)
- Answer categories should be mutually exclusive
- Alignment can be vertical and horizontal, no best alignment
- Multiple banking (table style) has severe ordering effects
What is important to know with drop-down menu’s in surveyy design (3)
- Visible options are clicked on more frequently
- Primacy effects (because they require more action)
- DO NOT USE IT FOR BIRTH YEAR, HECKING ANNOYING
What are 2 approaches for programming the routing in a survey?
- Linear programming - the selection of a response option triggers the system to display the next applicable question
- Object-related programming - If this, then that, otherwise that. Should always be preferred
What are the different types of error messages / checks? (3)
- Soft checks - warnings that can be ignored by the respondent, able to complete
- Hard checks - warnings that can not be ignored, unable to complete
- Edit checks - Hard check in combination with an error message. Think of age between 0 - 99. Error message is friendly and polite
What can you tell me about a progress indicator (3)?
- Dilemma - you want to know how long, but knowing could scare people away
- Not always true - because of routing you can be a lot further than it seems on the progress bar
- Best option: indicate survey length at the beginning of the survey
What is a fill in an online survey?
- Question 1 = what is the name of your first kid (Henk)
- Question 2 = how old is Henk?
Fill is the autosave of earlier given information that is used in to auto-fill later questions
What can be said about the use of mandatory questions (3)?
- The decision is for the insight of the researcher
- Debate in ethics (how ethical is it to use - (privacy, burden, freedom)
- How much is the information needed
