TY - JOUR
T1 - The Effect of Survey Mode on Socially Undesirable Responses to Open-ended Questions
T2 - A Mixed Methods Approach
AU - Wallace, Danielle
AU - Cesar, Gabriel
AU - Hedberg, E. C.
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the College of Public Service and Community Solutions at Arizona State University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, © The Author(s) 2018.
PY - 2018/5/1
Y1 - 2018/5/1
N2 - We estimate the difference in the chance of giving a socially undesirable response, one that violates social norms, by administration mode (online or in person) for a self-administered questionnaire (SAQ). We do this by evaluating open-ended responses to a photographic stimulus designed to generate undesirable responses. We test five variables: socially undesirable responses generally, blatant stereotyping, distaste, inappropriate descriptors, and the number of words in the response. The results show that, contrary to expectations, online SAQs are not more likely to produce socially undesirable responses generally, but online responses are less likely to contain blatant stereotyping. Responses from the online SAQs were longer, suggesting that respondents from the paper-and-pencil SAQs may have used stereotypes to bypass writing lengthy responses. The longer responses of online respondents enabled them to avoid stereotyping, thereby biasing their responses in an alternate way.
AB - We estimate the difference in the chance of giving a socially undesirable response, one that violates social norms, by administration mode (online or in person) for a self-administered questionnaire (SAQ). We do this by evaluating open-ended responses to a photographic stimulus designed to generate undesirable responses. We test five variables: socially undesirable responses generally, blatant stereotyping, distaste, inappropriate descriptors, and the number of words in the response. The results show that, contrary to expectations, online SAQs are not more likely to produce socially undesirable responses generally, but online responses are less likely to contain blatant stereotyping. Responses from the online SAQs were longer, suggesting that respondents from the paper-and-pencil SAQs may have used stereotypes to bypass writing lengthy responses. The longer responses of online respondents enabled them to avoid stereotyping, thereby biasing their responses in an alternate way.
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U2 - 10.1177/1525822X18766284
DO - 10.1177/1525822X18766284
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85045727024
SN - 1525-822X
VL - 30
SP - 105
EP - 123
JO - Field Methods
JF - Field Methods
IS - 2
ER -