As a self-administered survey mode, web surveys allow respondents to temporarily leave the survey page and switch to another web page in a different browser tab or to another window/app. This form of sequential multitasking has the potential to disrupt the response process and reduce data quality if respondents become distracted (Krosnick, 1991; Sendelbah et al., 2016). Browser data indicating respondents leaving the survey page allow non-reactive measurement of their multitasking. We investigated the prevalence of page switching, number of switching events and time spent absent per event with respect to respondents’ characteristics and devices used. Furthermore, we analysed the …

As survey costs increase and response rates decrease, researchers are looking for alternative methods to collect data from study subjects. Passively collected data may offer a way to reduce the burden on research subjects while also collecting high-quality data needed for social science research. Examples of passive data collection tools are applications installed on mobile devices and sensors in subjects’ homes or worn on the body. In this study, we focus on always-on location data collected from subjects’ iPhones. To explore the promise of passively collected data to augment and improve survey data, we conducted a 2-week pilot study with …

Within the survey context, a geofence can be defined as a geographical area that triggers a survey invitation when an individual enters the area, dwells in the area for a defined amount of time or exits the area. Geofences may be used to administer context-specific surveys, such as an evaluation survey of a shopping experience at a specific retail location. While geofencing is already used in other contexts (e.g., marketing and retail), this technology seems so far to be underutilized in survey research. We implemented a geofence survey in a smartphone data collection project and geofenced 410 job centers with …

Questionnaire development, evaluation, and pretesting research is critical for ensuring that survey questions, materials, and data collection procedures produce the highest quality data possible. Interviewer-administered cognitive interviews is a common pretesting method used to collect rich, qualitative data. As technology has advanced, researchers can conduct similar research online in self-administered modes (Behr 2016), allowing for pretesting with larger samples. Each approach has strengths and limitations that researchers can leverage to address their pretesting goals. This research presents a multi-study, iterative project using traditional and online pretesting to evaluate new confidentiality language. Study 1 used traditional cognitive interviews to collect information …