What Happens if You Offer a Mobile Option to Your Web Panel? Evidence From a Probability-Based Panel of Internet Users

Abstract

This article reports from a pilot study that was conducted in a probability-based online panel in the Netherlands. Two parallel surveys were conducted: one in the traditional questionnaire layout of the panel and the other optimized for mobile completion with new software that uses a responsive design (optimizes the layout for the device chosen). The latter questionnaire was optimized for mobile completion, and respondents could choose whether they wanted to complete the survey on their mobile phone or on a regular desktop. Results show that a substantive number of respondents (57%) used their mobile phone for survey completion. No differences were found between mobile and desktop users with regard to break offs, item nonresponse, time to complete the survey, or response effects such as length of answers to an open-ended question and the number of responses in a check-all-that-apply question. A considerable number of respondents gave permission to record their GPS coordinates, which are helpful in defining where the survey was taken. Income, household size, and household composition were found to predict mobile completion. In addition, younger respondents, who typically form a hard-to-reach group, show higher mobile completion rates.

What are the Characteristics of Respondents using Different Devices in Mixed‐device Online Surveys? Evidence from Six UK Surveys

“…Peterson () found that in the US female participants, younger people, people of Black and Hispanic backgrounds and medical specialists were more likely to access surveys on smartphones than on PCs when compared to other groups. All studies discussed earlier which found significant associations between device used and age and between device used and gender observed the same direction of association: younger people, as would be expected, were more likely to use mobile devices, and older people were more likely to use PCs and laptops (Toepoel & Lugtig, ; de Bruijne & Wijnant, ; Bosnjak et al , ; Revilla et al , ; Peterson 2012), and female participants were more likely to use mobile devices than male participants (de Bruijne & Wijnant, ; Peterson, 2012; Revilla et al , ).…”

“…Due to the specific nature of the last two surveys, it is impossible to study associations between mobile device use and age. However, the first three surveys have samples of younger and older respondents, and their online survey behaviour are of interest as previous studies reported differences in device usage for online survey completion by age in online survey completion (de Bruijne & Wijnant, ; Bosnjak et al , ; Peterson, ; Toepoel & Lugtig, ; Revilla et al , ).…”

“…We briefly review this literature, and a summary of their findings is also presented in Table . According to Toepoel and Lugtig (), age, income, household composition, presence of children and household size were significant predictors of mobile completion, whereas gender, education and urbanisation were not. More specifically, households without children where the woman was older than 50 years old had the lowest likelihood to use a mobile device in the survey in comparison to other groups followed by households without children where the woman was younger than 50 years.…”

“…Researchers have already started to investigate respondents characteristics in mixed‐device online surveys in other countries, including the Netherlands (de Bruijne & Wijnant, ; Toepoel & Lugtig, ), Germany (Bosnjak et al , ), the US (Peterson, ) and Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico (Revilla et al , ). We briefly review this literature, and a summary of their findings is also presented in Table .…”

Mobile-only web survey respondents

“…We expect male and younger respondents, as well as respondents in paid work, in larger households, with higher incomes, and of non-white ethnicity to use a mobile device more often (Struminskaya et al 2015;Toepoel and Lugtig 2014). …”