Examination of a ’Web Mode Effect’: An Experimental Comparison of Web and Paper Based Surveys

Since the beginning, pros and cons of Web based surveys have been heavily discussed. It is commonly held that Web surveys have advantages over other data collection modes as regards time consumption and overall costs - but also, that it is at the expense of data quality. Besides coverage and sampling errors, Web surveys presumably produce more measurement errors than other modes due to respondents’ lack of cognitive effort to answer the survey questions carefully. However, a comparison of two groups of students, one asked to fill out a questionnaire on paper and the other asked to complete a Web version suggests that such “Web mode effect” does not exist, since Web respondents are not more prone to satisficing.