Examining Completion Rates in Web Surveys via Over 25,000 Real-World Surveys

A survey’s completion rate is one of its most important data quality measures. There are quite a few published studies examining web survey completion rate through experimental approaches. In this study, we expand the existing literature by examining the predictors of web survey completion rate usin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSocial science computer review Vol. 36; no. 1; pp. 116 - 124
Main Authors Liu, Mingnan, Wronski, Laura
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.02.2018
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Bars
Data quality
Internet
Polls & surveys
School dropouts
survey difficulty
progress bar
survey length
response rate
web survey
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Summary:A survey’s completion rate is one of its most important data quality measures. There are quite a few published studies examining web survey completion rate through experimental approaches. In this study, we expand the existing literature by examining the predictors of web survey completion rate using 25,080 real-world web surveys conducted by a single online panel. Our findings are consistent with the literature on some dimensions, such as finding a negative relationship between completion rate and survey length and question difficulty. Also, surveys without progress bars have higher completion rates than surveys with progress bars. This study also generates new insights into survey design features, such as the impact of the first question type and length on completion rate.
ISSN:0894-4393
1552-8286
DOI:10.1177/0894439317695581