Factors Affecting Response Rates Of The Web Survey A Systematic Review
1. Factors affecting response rates in survey development
1.1. Content of web questionnaires
Response rate is closely related to who the sponsors are, what the topic is, and how long the survey takes to complete.
First: Official sponsorship of a surveys: sponsored by academic and governmental agencies have higher response rates than those sponsored by commercial
Influenced how respondents perceived and answered similar questions about sexual harassment by a neutral research institution and a feminist organization.
Second: the topic of a survey influences responses rates.
When the topic is with high salience (i.e., the topic is of high interests to some surveys), potential respondents are more likely to respond
Survey topics are sensitive or non-sensitive or concern attitude or fact is likely to affect response rates in web surveys
Third: length of a survey, although the effect sizes in various studies range from strong to very weak
Due to various measures used in reporting the survey length, including the number of questions, the number of pages, the number of screens, and the time of completing a survey
Idea length: thirteen minutes or less of the completion time
1.2. The presentation of web questionnaires
Three issues of how to present web surveys, question writing, question ordering, and visual display of the web questionnaire.
First: Question wording - Keeping questions simple, avoiding biased and vague questions
Careful changes when adopting, for example, telephone surveys questions in an oral form for web or adopting mail survey in paper–pencil form for online forms
Second: Question ordering - preceding questions can affect how potential respondents consider and evaluate the latter questions
Ordering effect could be more unique and substantial randomization of responses improve validity of data, the ordering effect needs to be estimated to guide web survey design
Third: Question display
Technical issues: how to choose screen-by-screen or scrolling
1.1. Content of web questionnaires
Response rate is closely related to who the sponsors are, what the topic is, and how long the survey takes to complete.
First: Official sponsorship of a surveys: sponsored by academic and governmental agencies have higher response rates than those sponsored by commercial
Influenced how respondents perceived and answered similar questions about sexual harassment by a neutral research institution and a feminist organization.
Second: the topic of a survey influences responses rates.
When the topic is with high salience (i.e., the topic is of high interests to some surveys), potential respondents are more likely to respond
Survey topics are sensitive or non-sensitive or concern attitude or fact is likely to affect response rates in web surveys
Third: length of a survey, although the effect sizes in various studies range from strong to very weak
Due to various measures used in reporting the survey length, including the number of questions, the number of pages, the number of screens, and the time of completing a survey
Idea length: thirteen minutes or less of the completion time
1.2. The presentation of web questionnaires
Three issues of how to present web surveys, question writing, question ordering, and visual display of the web questionnaire.
First: Question wording - Keeping questions simple, avoiding biased and vague questions
Careful changes when adopting, for example, telephone surveys questions in an oral form for web or adopting mail survey in paper–pencil form for online forms
Second: Question ordering - preceding questions can affect how potential respondents consider and evaluate the latter questions
Ordering effect could be more unique and substantial randomization of responses improve validity of data, the ordering effect needs to be estimated to guide web survey design
Third: Question display
Technical issues: how to choose screen-by-screen or scrolling