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"This paper reports on a series of experiments to explore ways to use the technology of Web surveys to help respondents provide well-formed answers to questions that may be difficult to answer. Specifically, we focus on the use of drop-down or select lists and JavaScript lookup tables as alternatives to open text fields for the collection of information on prescription drugs. The first two experiments were conducted among members of opt-in panels in the U.S. The third experiment was conducted in the 2013 Health and Retirement Study Internet Survey. Respondents in each of the studies were randomly assigned to one of three input methods: text field, drop box, or JavaScript lookup, and asked to provide the names of prescription drugs they were taking. We compare both the quality of answers obtained using the three methods, and the effort (time) taken to provide such answers. We examine differences in performance on the three input format types by key respondent demographics and Internet experience. We discuss some of the technical challenges of implementing complex question types and offer some recommendations for the use of such tools in Web surveys." (author's abstract)

"Survey researchers are making increasing use of paradata - such as keystrokes, clicks, and timestamps - to evaluate and improve survey instruments but also to understand respondents and how they answer surveys. Since the introduction of paradata, researchers have been asking whether and how respondents should be informed about the capture and use of their paradata while completing a survey. In a series of three vignette-based experiments, we examine alternative ways of informing respondents about capture of paradata and seeking consent for their use. In all three experiments, any mention of paradata lowers stated willingness to participate in the hypothetical surveys. Even the condition where respondents were asked to consent to the use of paradata at the end of an actual survey resulted in a significant proportion declining. The author's research shows that requiring such explicit consent may reduce survey participation without adequately informing survey respondents about what paradata are and why they are being used." (author's abstract)

"A large number of findings in survey research suggest that misreporting in sensitive questions is situational and can vary in relation to context. The methodological literature demonstrates that social desirability biases are less prevalent in self-administered surveys, particularly in Web surveys, when there is no interviewer and less risk of presenting oneself in an unfavorable light. Since there is a growing number of users of mobile Web browsers, the authors focused our study on the effects of different devices (PC or cell phone) in Web surveys on the respondents' willingness to report sensitive information. To reduce selection bias, we carried out a two-wave cross-over experiment using a volunteer online access-panel in Russia. Participants were asked to complete the questionnaire in both survey modes: PC and mobile Web survey. The authors hypothesized that features of mobile Web usage may affect response accuracy and lead to more socially desirable responses compared to the PC Web survey mode. They found significant differences in the reporting of alcohol consumption by mode, consistent with our hypothesis. But other sensitive questions did not show similar effects. They also found that the presence of familiar bystanders had an impact on the responses, while the presence of strangers did not have any significant effect in either survey mode. Contrary to expectations, the authors did not find evidence of a positive impact of completing the questionnaire at home and trust in data confidentiality on the level of reporting. These results could help survey practitioners to design and improve data quality in Web surveys completed on different devices." (author's abstract)

Pictures used to supplement survey questions can systematically influence the answers obtained. Respondents react to the content of the image, giving higher-frequency reports when pictures of high-frequency events are shown and lower-frequency reports when pictures of low-frequency events are shown. The effects of pictures on responses are similar to those of verbal instructions (i.e., they produce an assimilation effect). Our results show that verbal and visual language both have independent effects as well as interact with each other. Verbal instructions have stronger effects than the visual effects produced by pictures, however, and can be used to counteract the visual context effects. We find that respondents pay more attention to verbal instruction when the verbal and visual cues are inconsistent with each other. This article provides evidence for a hierarchy of features that respondents attend to, with verbal language taking precedence over visual cues like pictures. Effective question writing, with verbal instructions making the question clear to respondents, reduces visual context effects. We found little evidence that conditions with pictures were evaluated better than conditions without pictures. Adapted from the source document.

For several years, we have experimented with various ways of communicating disclosure risk and harm to respondents in order to determine how these affect their willingness to participate in surveys. These experiments, which used vignettes administered to an online panel as well as a mail survey sent to a national probability sample, have demonstrated that (a) the probability of disclosure alone has no apparent effect on people's willingness to participate in the survey described, (b) the sensitivity of the survey topic has such an effect, and (c) making explicit the possible harms that might result from disclosure also reduces willingness to participate, in both the vignette and the mail experiments. As a last study in this series, we experimented with different ways of describing disclosure risk in informed consent statements that might more plausibly be used in real surveys, again using vignettes administered to an online panel. As suggested by our earlier work, we found that the precise wording of the confidentiality assurance had little effect on respondents' stated willingness to participate in the hypothetical survey described. However, the experimental manipulations did have some effect on perceptions of the risks and benefits of participation, suggesting that they are processed by respondents. And, as we have found in our previous studies, the topic of the survey has a consistent and statistically significant effect on stated willingness to participate. We explore some implications of these findings for researchers seeking to provide adequate information to potential survey respondents without alarming them unnecessarily.

If empirical estimates of disclosure risk are included in informed consent statements for surveys or other forms of research, participants must be able to understand the information provided. Using data from an online vignette-based experiment, this article explores the role that numeracy or quantitative literacy may play in comprehension of disclosure risk. Results suggest that less numerate persons are less sensitive to extreme differences in the disclosure risk described in the hypothetical vignettes.

Monetary incentives are increasingly used to help motivate survey participation. Research Ethics Committees have begun to ask whether, and under what conditions, the use of monetary incentives to induce participation might be coercive. The article reports research from an online vignette-based study bearing on this question, concluding that at present the evidence suggests that larger incentives do not induce research participants to accept higher risks than they would be unwilling to accept with smaller ones.