The method of web probing integrates cognitive interviewing techniques into web surveys and is increasingly used to evaluate survey questions. In a usual web probing scenario, probes are administered immediately after the question to be tested (concurrent probing), typically as open-ended questions. A second possibility of administering probes is…

Social network research often depends on the willingness of respondents to provide personal information about themselves and alters. Survey design strategies that increase willingness to share this information are necessary for social network research to be feasible, especially when name generators are used for sampling because rosters are…

As our modern world has become increasingly digitalized, various types of data from different data domains are available that can enrich survey data. To link survey data to other sources, consent from the survey respondents is required. This article compares consent to data linkage requests for seven data domains: administrative data, smartphone…

Event history calendars (EHCs) are frequently used in social measurement to capture important information about the time ordering of events in people's lives and enable inference about the relationships of the events with other outcomes of interest. To date, EHCs have primarily been designed for face-to-face or telephone survey interviewing, and…

A number of previous studies have shown that the direction of rating scales may affect the distribution of responses. There is also considerable evidence that the cognitive process of answering a survey question differ by survey mode, which suggests that scale direction effects may interact with mode effects. The aim of this study was to explore…

Even small monetary incentives, e.g., a one-dollar bill in a postal invitation letter, can increase the response rate in a web survey. However, in the euro currency area, the smallest amount of monetary incentive for a postal invitation is a five-euro bill, which is costly. As such, we conducted a random experiment with prepaid stamp and postcard…

In web surveys, no interviewer is present to clarify question comprehension problems, which can be particularly prevalent among respondents with low literacy skills. Although plain language is used in various contexts to improve text comprehensibility, its use in social science questionnaires has not been investigated to date. Using a…

Technological advancements and changes in online survey participation pave the way for new data collection methods. Particularly, the increasing smartphone rate in online surveys facilitates a re-consideration of prevailing communication channels to, for instance, naturalize the communication process between researchers and respondents and to…

This article presents the results of a general population study that used three different modes of data collection administered sequentially. The study began with a letter that contained the link to an online survey. Those who did not respond were interviewed by phone or face-to-face. The article focuses on the cost of the study related to…

Probes are follow-ups to survey questions used to gain insights on respondents' understanding of and responses to these questions. They are usually administered as open-ended questions, primarily in the context of questionnaire pretesting. Due to the decreased cost of data collection for open-ended questions in web surveys, researchers have argued…

Telephone surveys face more and more criticism because of decreasing coverage and increasing costs, and the risk of producing socially desirable answers. Consequently, survey administrators consider switching their surveys to the web mode, although the web mode is more susceptible to item nonresponse. Still, we do not know whether this is true for…

This paper reports how I addressed the issue of extensive missing values in my PhD study, "Digital Competencies of High School Mathematics Teachers". I collected data using an online survey. Several methods exist to address the issue of missing values. I utilised multiple imputation (MI) as it provides more accurate results. The mean…

Qualitative research has been strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the possibilities that Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies such as Skype, WhatsApp, and Zoom offer to qualitative scholars. Based on the experience of using such technologies to collect qualitative data for our PhD studies, we present how we dealt…

Background: Since the inception of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System in 1991, all surveys have been conducted in schools, using paper and pencil instruments (PAPI). For the 2019 YRBSS, sites were offered the opportunity to conduct their surveys using electronic data collection. This study aimed to determine whether differences in select…

The ease at which online paradata can be captured in web surveys seems to increase social researchers' desire to collect such data. Yet little attention is paid to whether respondents actually approve of their collection. This article, therefore, studies online survey respondents' acceptance of automatically collecting their geographical…