The Factorial Survey: The Impact of the Presentation Format of Vignettes on Answer Behavior and Processing Time

The factorial survey is an experimental design in which the researcher constructs varying descriptions of situations or individual persons (vignettes), which will be judged by respondents with regard to a particular aspect. Some researchers present vignettes in text format as short stories, others present the central information of vignettes in a tabular format. To date, only a few sentences have been published, by Auspurg and Hinz, on the impact of the presentation format (text vs. table) on the answer behavior of students. Empirically, no differences were found between either format. Based on an Internet experiment conducted with a quota sample, we find evidence that ordinary tabular formats outperform text vignettes in terms of total vignette nonresponse but not when it comes to processing time. The former result especially applies in the case of less well-educated people. We further find that tabular format does not perform worse than text format regarding response inconsistency.