Survey Design Features Influencing Response Rates in Web Surveys

In this paper we present an overview of several Web surveys. The aim of this research is to study Web survey design characteristics that may influence participation in Web surveys (Lozar Manfreda, 2001; Vehovar et al., 2002). Except for a few studies (whose results we present below), the previous research has mainly studied the effect of a single factor, or a group of related factors on the response rate, while attempting to hold all other potential factors constant. However, there may be interaction among the factors. In addition, authors rarely define which stage of the Web survey process (Lozar Manfreda, 2001; Vehovar et al., 2002) they refer to. However, different factors may have an impact at different stages.

[1]  Tracy L. Tuten,et al.  Classifying Response Behaviors in Web-based Surveys , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[2]  Kim Bartel Sheehan,et al.  E-mail Survey Response Rates: A Review , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[3]  T. Heberlein,et al.  Factors affecting response rates to mailed questionnaires: A quantitative analysis of the published literature. , 1978 .

[4]  Yehuda Baruch,et al.  Response Rate in Academic Studies — A Comparative Analysis , 1999 .

[5]  R. Jones,et al.  Health surveys in the workplace: comparison of postal, email and World Wide Web methods. , 1999, Occupational medicine.

[6]  G. Glass,et al.  Meta-analysis in social research , 1981 .

[7]  Tracy L. Tuten,et al.  Internet Surveys and Data Quality : A Review , 2002 .

[8]  Vasja Vehovar,et al.  Design of Web Survey Questionnaires: Three Basic Experiments , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[9]  D. Dillman.  Mail and telephone surveys : the total design method , 1979 .

[10]  Michael Bosnjak,et al.  Participation in Non-Restricted Web-Surveys: A Typology and Explanatory Model for Item-Nonresponse , 2001 .

[11]  Russel L. Thompson,et al.  A Meta-Analysis of Response Rates in Web- or Internet-Based Surveys , 2000 .

[12]  F. Langerak,et al.  Non-Probability Sampling for WWW Surveys: A Comparison of Methods , 1998 .

[13]  H. Cooper,et al.  A Quantitative Review of Research Design Effects on Response Rates to Questionnaires , 1983 .

[14]  Wolfgang Bandilla,et al.  Banner-advertised web surveys , 2000 .