Using Eye-Tracking Methodology to Study Grid Question Designs in Web Surveys

Neuert Cornelia E. (), Roßmann Joss () and Silber Henning ()
Additional contact information
Neuert Cornelia E.: GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, P.O. Box 12 21 55, 68072 Mannheim, Germany.
Roßmann Joss: GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, P.O. Box 12 21 55, 68072 Mannheim, Germany.
Silber Henning: GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, P.O. Box 12 21 55, 68072 Mannheim, Germany.

Journal of Official Statistics, 2023, vol. 39, issue 1, 79-101

Abstract: Grid questions are frequently employed in web surveys due to their assumed response efficiency. In line with this, many previous studies have found shorter response times for grid questions compared to item-by-item formats. Our contribution to this literature is to investigate how altering the question format affects response behavior and the depth of cognitive processing when answering both grid question and item-by-item formats. To answer these questions, we implemented an experiment with three questions in an eye-tracking study. Each question consisted of a set of ten items which respondents answered either on a single page (large grid), on two pages with five items each (small grid), or on ten separate pages (item-by-item). We did not find substantial differences in cognitive processing overall, while the processing of the question stem and the response scale labels was significantly higher for the item-by-item design than for the large grid in all three questions. We, however, found that when answering an item in a grid question, respondents often refer to surrounding items when making a judgement. We discuss the findings and limitations of our study and provide suggestions for practical design decisions.

Keywords: Web surveys; response behavior; cognitive processing; question design; eye-tracking methodology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/jos-2023-0004 (text/html)

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:vrs:offsta:v:39:y:2023:i:1:p:79-101:n:1

DOI: 10.2478/jos-2023-0004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Official Statistics is currently edited by Annica Isaksson and Ingegerd Jansson

More articles in Journal of Official Statistics from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().