Georg-Christoph Haas’s research while affiliated with Institute for Employment Research and other places

Previous research is inconclusive regarding the effects of paper and web surveys on response burdens. We conducted an establishment survey with random assignment to paper and web modes to examine this issue. We compare how the actual and perceived response burdens differ when respondents complete a survey in the paper mode, in the web mode and when they are allowed to choose between the two modes. Our results show that in the web mode, respondents have a lower estimated time to complete the questionnaire, while we do not find differences between paper and the web on the perceived response time and perceived burden. Even though the response burden in the web mode is lower, our study finds no evidence of an increased response burden when moving an establishment survey from paper to the web.

Combining survey data with administrative data can make both sources more valuable to researchers, but often respondent consent is needed before such linkage can be done. Asking the linkage consent question at the beginning of the questionnaire yields higher consent rates than asking at the end. However, placing this question at the beginning of the survey may impact respondents’ response behavior throughout the rest of the survey. In this study, we use techniques of causal analysis to investigate the effects of granting consent at the beginning of the survey on later response behavior. We find that responses to three of the four tested variables are not affected, but one variable did show increased measurement error.