Forced‐response in online surveys: Bias from reactance and an increase in sex‐specific dropout

Stefan Stieger, Ulf-Dietrich Reips and Martin Voracek

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2007, vol. 58, issue 11, 1653-1660

Abstract: Due to computer technology, a forced‐response can be easily achieved in online questionnaires and is frequently used to gather complete datasets. An Internet‐based quasi‐experiment was conducted on the student server at the University of Vienna to study the influence of forced‐response on dropout, demographic reports, and the content of the results. Forced‐response was shown to substantially increase dropout. In addition, forced‐response interacted with reported sex in eliminating a naturally occurring sex difference in dropout that was observed for the questionnaire whenever responses did not need to be enforced. Also reported sex turned out to have a mediating effect on time of dropout: Men dropped out earlier than did women. Further analyses revealed a reactance effect, as predicted by reactance theory. It is concluded that data from online questionnaires with forced‐response designs are in danger of being hampered by dropout and reactance.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20651

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jamist:v:58:y:2007:i:11:p:1653-1660

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1532-2890

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology from Association for Information Science & Technology
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().