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Diary postings are responses to real-world events, actors and processes that de facto exist and can be identified. This article explores the conditions of capturing voter behaviour and voters’ perceptions of election campaigns by methodologically testing innovative digital instruments for qualitative diary data collection (an app for mobile devices and a webform). We do this in light of three criteria: participant engagement, data relevance and participants’ personal involvement. Based on a real-world methodological experiment in the Fall of 2019 during the Norwegian local election campaign, we found that the app promotes more engagement as to frequency of diary postings, while the webform promoted more comprehensive postings. Concerning participants with different socio-demographic and political profiles, both platforms ensured data relevance in the sense that data match the concepts to be studied: voter behaviour and perception of election campaign. Moreover, both facilitated personal involvement and reflections. The article concludes with a reflection on the potential contribution of the diary method in election studies.

Increasing use of web surveys and different devices for survey completion calls for examination of device effects on survey response quality. Whereas most previous studies are based on web panels, subgroups (e.g. students) or short questionnaires designed for device experiments, compelling participants to respond through specific devices, this study is based on two large nationally representative cross sectional samples (ISSP 2018 and ISSP 2019) where completion device was optional. Seven indicators of response quality are applied, allowing a comparison among survey participants answering the questionnaire by smartphone, tablet and by PC. Results are in line with previous findings, and do not give support to any assumptions of device effects in the quality of responses. Respondents’ self-evaluated engagement in survey completion do not differ across devices, and only small and non-systematic differences between devices on satisficing indicators such as the tendency to agree regardless of question content (acquiescence), non-substantive answers, selection of mid-point response options and primacy effects, and straightlining are identified. Controlling the associations between response device and the response quality indicators for self-selection biases did not change the overall result.

supplementary_material for Generalization of Classic Question Order Effects Across Cultures by Tobias H. Stark, Henning Silber, Jon A. Krosnick, Annelies G. Blom, Midori Aoyagi, Ana Belchior, Michael Bosnjak, Sanne Lund Clement, Melvin John, Guðbjörg Andrea Jónsdóttir, Karen Lawson, Peter Lynn, Johan Martinsson, Ditte Shamshiri-Petersen, Endre Tvinnereim and Ruoh-rong Yu in Sociological Methods & Research

Tiderne, hvor surveys blev besvaret enten ved hjælp af en interviewer eller på papir hjemme ved spisebordet, er under forandring. Fremvæksten af nye webbaserede indsamlingsmetoder og besvarelses-devices betyder, at respondenter i dag kan udfylde surveyen på mange forskellige måder og i mange forskellige kontekster. Hvor det muligvis er positivt for svarprocenten, rejser det imidlertid spørgsmålet om, hvorvidt det er befordrende for respondenternes engagement i besvarelsen og i sidste ende påvirker kvaliteten af data negativt. På baggrund af en repræsentativ befolkningssurvey finder denne artikel dog, at der ikke er forskel på web survey-besvarelser på henholdsvis PC, tablet og smartphone. Når der tages højde for, at nogle grupper foretrækker bestemte devices frem for andre, såkaldte selektionseffekter, så er der ingen forskel på, hvor meget respondenterne engagerer sig, hverken når de selv skal vurdere det, eller når vi måler det som tiden brugt på besvarelsen. Derfor er det anbefalingen til afsendere af web surveys, at de ikke skal afstå fra at udbyde web surveys på forskellige devices. Tværtimod tyder det på, at fordelene ved at tillade mobile besvarelser overstiger ulemperne, hvis blot der tages højde for, at web survey-layoutet er optimeret til det.

Formålet med litteraturgennemgangen er dels, at undersøge, hvilke forhold der fremmer og hæmmer arbejdsmarkedsintegrationen af personer med handicap, dels at anvise, hvor der er behov for ny viden og undersøgelser omkring personer med handicap og arbejdsmarkedet.

Since the beginning, pros and cons of Web based surveys have been heavily discussed. It is commonly held that Web surveys have advantages over other data collection modes as regards time consumption and overall costs - but also, that it is at the expense of data quality. Besides coverage and sampling errors, Web surveys presumably produce more measurement errors than other modes due to respondents’ lack of cognitive effort to answer the survey questions carefully. However, a comparison of two groups of students, one asked to fill out a questionnaire on paper and the other asked to complete a Web version suggests that such “Web mode effect” does not exist, since Web respondents are not more prone to satisficing.

Declining response rates is one of the most significant challenges for survey based research today. Seen in isolation, traditional interviewer based data collection methods are still the most effective but also the most expensive, especially the greater difficulty in gaining responses taken into account. As a solution, mixed-mode designs have been employed as a way to achieve higher response rates, while keeping the overall costs low. In particular, the use of web based surveys has expanded considerably during the last few years, both as a single data collection method and as a component in mixed mode designs. But web surveys are subject to points of criticism. In addition to obvious errors in relation to coverage, sampling and non-response, the underlying construct is that web surveys produce measurement errors per se due to more superficial cognitive processing by respondents. Thus, including web based surveys in mixed-mode designs may improve response rates at a low cost but serious mode effects on measurement presumably occur and lead to poorer survey quality. However, the objections are still open to argument. A large part of literature on the subject matter compares web surveys with telephone surveys, not enabling determination of a “web mode effect”. In this case, differences might as well be due to differences between self-administered and interviewer-administered collection methods. Other parts of literature on mixed-mode design including a web option are using stratified sampling for different modes, and mode differences then are influenced by stratification differences. In both cases the real mode differences are nearly impossible to determine and remains rather speculative. The purpose of this contribution is to examine potential “web mode effects” in mixed-mode surveys. Compared to self-administered surveys by pen and paper, do web based surveys then produce greater measurement errors? Are there indications of greater tendency to ‘mental coin flipping’ when responding via web and are the answers less consistent? The questions asked will be answered on the basis of a survey experiment among political science students divided into to groups, one asked to fill out a questionnaire on attitudes towards environmental issues on paper and the other asked to fill out a web based version.