My breaks between posts are getting longer and longer. Sorry my dear readers. Today, I am writing about research done over a year ago that I did with Vera Toepoel and Alerk Amin. Our study was about a group of respondents we can no longer ignore: Mobile-only web survey respondents. These are people, who do no longer use a laptop or desktop PC and use their smartphone for most or any of their Internet browsing, but instead use a smartphone.
Last week, I wrote about the fact that respondents in panel surveys are now using tablets and smartphones to complete web surveys . We found that in the LISS panel, respondents who use tablets and smartphones are much more likely to switch devices over time and not participate in some months.
The question we actually wanted to answer was a different one: do respondents who complete surveys on their smartphone or mobile give worse answers?
Vera Toepoel and I have been writing a few articles over the last two years about how survey respondents are taking up tablet computers and smartphones. We were interested in studying whether people in a probability-based web panel ( the LISS panel ) use different devices over time, and whether siwtches in devices for completing surveys are associated with more or less measurement error.
In order to answer this question, we have coded the User Agent Strings of the devices used by more than 6.
I am back from some great holidays, and am revisiting some of the research I did over the last 2 years. Back then, I would have not expected that I would become so interested in doing survey research on mobile phones. I do think that a little change of research topic does one good.
I have written two papers with Vera Toepoel on how to do surveys on mobile phones. The first question we had was whether people were actually likely to do a survey on a mobile phone.
Big data and new technologies to do survey research. These were in my view the two themes of the 2014 AAPOR conference . The conference organisation tried to push the theme ‘Measurement and the role of pubic opinion in a democracy’, but I don’t think the theme was really reflected in the talks at the conference. Or perhaps I have missed those talks, the conference was huge as always (> 1000 participants).