In democracies, surveys play a key role in policy decision-making. That immigrants and people living in socially disadvantaged areas are especially unlikely to participate in surveys might, therefore, lead to their opinions not being considered to the same extent as those of others. However, the mechanisms for nonresponse among these groups are relatively unknown, even though they currently make up a significant proportion of the population in many Western societies. In this manuscript, the mechanism of nonresponse is explored through an exploratory and a confirmatory phase. In the exploratory phase, nine focus group interviews were conducted, and two novel and …

Food data are important for policymakers and researchers to understand food acquisition and expenditure, nutrition, food environments, food assistance, and so on. However, the collection of food data by asking people to recall their food acquisition is challenging for respondents sampled from a general population due to faulty memory, the burden associated with responding in a timely manner, and lack of knowledge. To improve recall and reduce reporting error, survey organizations may provide a diary for respondents to record foods obtained during the study period as they get them. This paper reviews three types of food diaries used in existing …

Received wisdom in survey practice suggests that using web mode in the first wave of a panel study is not as effective as using interviewers. Based on data from a two-wave mode experiment for the Swiss Household Panel (SHP), this study examines how the use of online data collection in the first wave affects participation in the second wave, and if so, who is affected. The experiment compared the traditional SHP design of telephone interviewing to a mixed-mode design combining a household questionnaire by telephone with individual questionnaires by web and to a web-only design for the household and individual …

In many countries and contexts, survey researchers are facing decreasing response rates and increasing survey costs. Data collection is even more complex and expensive when rare or hard-to-reach populations are to be sampled and surveyed. In such cases alternative sampling and recruiting approaches are usually needed, including non-probability and online convenience sampling. A rather novel approach to recruiting rare populations for online and mobile-device surveys uses advertisements on social media networks. This paper provides a step-by-step guide on how to recruit web-survey participants via ads on Facebook and Instagram – two of the largest social networks worldwide. Researchers may use …

The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) is a Web-based organizational climate survey administered annually by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The survey targets full- or part-time, permanently employed civilian personnel from more than 80 U.S. government agencies. Despite increases in the scope, publicity, and uses of FEVS data, its response rate has gradually declined over time. In an effort to gauge the causes for nonresponse, this paper discusses results from an experiment fielded during the 2017 FEVS in which a portion of sampled individuals was given the opportunity to opt out from the survey. Before effectively being added to …