Abstract
Does completing a web survey on a smartphone or tablet computer reduce the quality of the data obtained compared to completing the survey on a laptop computer? This is an important question, since a growing proportion of web surveys are done on smartphones and tablets. Several earlier studies have attempted to gauge the effects of the switch from personal computers to mobile devices on data quality. We carried out a field experiment in eight counties around the United States that compared responses obtained by smartphones, tablets, and laptop computers. We examined a range of data quality measures including completion times, rates of missing data, straightlining, and the reliability and validity of scale responses. A unique feature of our study design is that it minimized selection effects; we provided the randomly determined device on which respondents completed the survey after they agreed to take part. As a result, respondents may have been using a device (e.g., a smartphone) for the first time. However, like many of the prior studies examining mobile devices, we find few effects of the type of device on data quality.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
