Improving web survey efficiency: the impact of an extra reminder and reminder content on web survey response

With the growing possibilities for conducting web surveys, researchers increasingly use such surveys to recruit student samples for research purposes in a wide array of social science disciplines. Simultaneously, higher education students are recurrently asked to complete course and teacher evaluati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of social research methodology Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 317 - 327
Main Author Van Mol, Christof
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 04.07.2017
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
College Students
Fatigue
Foreign Countries
Gender Differences
Generalizability
Higher education
Internet
Online Surveys
Polls & surveys
Prompting
Reminders
Research Methodology
Researchers
response rate
Response rates
Response Rates (Questionnaires)
Social research
Social science education
Social Science Research
Student Characteristics
Student Surveys
Student teacher relationship
students
survey fatigue
Teacher evaluations
Teachers
Web surveys
Belgium
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Summary:With the growing possibilities for conducting web surveys, researchers increasingly use such surveys to recruit student samples for research purposes in a wide array of social science disciplines. Simultaneously, higher education students are recurrently asked to complete course and teacher evaluations online and to participate in small-scale research projects of fellow students, potentially leading to survey fatigue among student populations across the globe. One of the most frequently reported effects of over-surveying is a decrease in overall response rates. This situation has significant impacts on the generalizability and external validity of findings based on web surveys. The collection of reliable data is, nevertheless, crucial for researchers as well as educational practitioners and administrators, and strategies should be developed for achieving acceptable response rates. This paper reports on a methodological experiment (N = 15,651) conducted at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, in which possible strategies to improve survey response are explored. I specifically focus on the impact of an extra reminder as well as specific reminder contents on response rates. The results reveal that extra reminders are effective for increasing response rates, but not for diversifying the sample.
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ISSN:1364-5579
1464-5300
DOI:10.1080/13645579.2016.1185255