New opportunities to enhance or extend (mobile) web survey data.
Date:
Description: During the last few years, an increasing proportion of surveys have been answered through the Internet, especially with smartphones. The enhanced capabilities of PCs and particularly smartphones provide new methodological opportunities. Devices’ sensors and apps allow researchers to collect new types of data, which can improve and expand survey measurement, and offer the potential to reduce measurement errors, respondent’s burden, and data collection costs. For example, GPS, accelerometers, web tracking applications and plug-ins, cameras and microphones, have already been used in (mobile) web survey research. Despite high hopes on the potential opportunities of using these new types of data, very little research has assessed the data quality of these approaches. Therefore, in this talk I will focus on discussing the advantage and disadvantages of using three of these new data types: metered data (data collected by a tracker installed on the respondent’s smartphone or personal computer, normally URLs); visual data (screenshots, photos and videos obtained during the survey or already stored on their device) and voice data (voice recording captured during the survey). Specifically, I will present the results of four papers that have already been published or are in the process of being published, which try to understand and uncover on the potential effects of each of these new data types on data quality. Overall, the results of the four papers point out to similar conclusions: although these new types of data present very interesting advantages, there are clear drawbacks that must be considered (e.g. reduced compliance rates, lower satisfaction). In addition, understanding the data quality of these new type of data is challenging, and requires even reconsidering how data quality is conceptualized and measured