A4 Refereed article in a conference publication
Examining Social Desirability Bias in Online and Offline Surveys
Authors: Aki Koivula, Pekka Räsänen, Outi Sarpila
Editors: Masaaki Kurosu
Conference name: International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
Publishing place: Cham
Publication year: 2019
Journal: International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
Book title : Human-Computer Interaction. Perspectives on Design
Series title: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS)
Volume: 11566
First page : 145
Last page: 158
ISBN: 978-3-030-22645-9
eISBN: 978-3-030-22646-6
ISSN: 0202-9743
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22646-6_11
Web address : https://books.google.fi/books?id=0qKhDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=10.1007/978-3-030-22646-6_11&source=bl&ots=0l6HwoBF6e&sig=ACfU3U10tlsgUF3bMwwwUNikzrLPkQ4vnw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjnw9X178fjAhUEwqYKHYUGCDQQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=10.1007/978-3-030-22646-6_11&f=false
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/40885634
This paper examines whether web-based survey responses differ from traditional mail-based questionnaire responses when examining attitudes towards sensitive issues in a mixed-mode survey. Our motivation for the study comes from social desirability bias, which is a generally discussed theme in social surveys. The data are derived from the Finnish section of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) 2013 (n = 1,243), which applied both self-conducted mail survey and web survey data collection techniques. In the analysis, we utilize items concerning attitudes towards immigrants. We found that mail-questionnaire respondents tend to express more negative attitudes towards immigration than the web-questionnaire group. This is especially true when analyzing the survey items, which use negative connotations in the question formulation. The results also indicated that socio-demographic background had a significant impact on responses, but these factors did not explain the total variation between the two response groups. We discuss our findings in light of the popularity of web-surveys and their increased use in social sciences. We conclude our paper with a notion that the mixed-mode survey is a reliable method of data collection, especially after controlling for relevant background variables, and their interactions between the alternative response modes.
Downloadable publication This is an electronic reprint of the original article. |