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...between the two methods. This article describes a study in which both telephone and web surveys were used to collect data on the corporate reputation of an international firm. Findings reveal significant differences in sample characteristics, response effects and overall costs. In addition to demographic differences, the web garnered a lower response rate, more item omissions, and produced more negative or neutral evaluations than did the telephone survey. Factor structure for the corporate reputation construct was simpler in the web-based data. Predictability of behavioural measures was essentially equivalent between the two modes; however, cost-per-contact was significantly lower in the web survey.
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Introduction
A growing number of researchers regard the web as a speedy, cheap and effective alternative to traditional data collection methods. Not only can web surveys deliver large samples within a short period of time, but also they can do so without the costs of interviewers, training, postage, data entry, and a myriad of other associated expenses. Furthermore, industry experts argue that web-based surveys can offer higher quality data due to elimination of interviewer error and built-in checks that prohibit respondent errors (McCullough 1998; Dillman 2000).
Concerns about internet access, technology unevenness, coverage error and sample representativeness, limited the early use of web surveys to finite populations, such as 'internet users,' or 'technology innovators'. Although technology barriers still pose some legitimate concerns for web-based research, the potential for wider deployment of web surveys is ballooning as the incidence of household computer ownership and internet accessibility continues to rise. According to a recent Nielsen//NetRatings report (2001), over 459 million people now have home-based internet access worldwide. Although households in the US and Canada still account for 40% of the world's on-line population, internet usage in European markets, Japan, and other developed/developing nations continues to explode at a double-digit pace.
Substantial data collection efficiencies, cost advantages, and wider dissemination of internet access among diverse groups are fuelling trends toward usage of web-based surveys in studies designed to be representative of more general populations. Although the future of web-based research appears promising, the movement toward using the web to generate inferential samples has some experts concerned. In a study of mail, telephone and web surveys used in political polling for the 1999 New Zealand general election, Hoek et al. (2002) concluded that web-based samples were seriously biased and that the biases noted could not be corrected by traditional weighting variables such as age and gender. In a discussion of sampling issues for web-based surveys, Bradley (1999) emphasises that 'a sample of internet users is only representative of internet users'. Couper (2000) stresses that demographic differences between web samples and the general population are only 'part of the story' and proposes that 'the key question is whether the two populations are similar on the substantive variables of interest' (p. 471). This issue, notes Couper, has received far less attention than it deserves from the research community as it generally requires more cumbersome and expensive designs, such as conducting surveys with different methods.
One example of the trend toward 'mainstreaming' web-based research is a movement within corporate and commercial research firms, and even among academics, to begin supplementing or replacing telephone with web-based surveys (Willems & Oosterveld 2003). For instance, internet surveys now account for 47% of Harris Interactive's polling business and the firm credits the transition from traditional telephone surveys to web-based surveys for their profit superiority in the industry (Einhart 2003). Each method is comparable for gathering data from large samples with sufficient statistical power in a short amount of time even though each relies on a different mode of data collection (person-administered versus computer-administered). This trend continues in spite of the fact that very little, if any, research has been reported concerning differences between these two methods that may significantly impact results. While there has been research done on the issue by commercial research companies and other research organisations, findings have been treated as proprietary and, thus, have not been published and made available to the broad research community. Techniques are available to help overcome differences in sample characteristics, but differences in substantive variables such as attitudes, intentions or behaviours, if such differences exist, may render subsamples incompatible and therefore make it inappropriate to combine results gathered via these two methods. Furthermore, substantive differences may have far-reaching implications for trend analysis of key indices monitored on a routine basis should web surveys eventually replace telephone surveys in commercial and corporate research studies.
The study reported in this paper examines differences in telephone versus web-based survey samples and responses. The context of the study was a single survey of corporate reputation conducted for a multinational corporation in a south-western metropolitan area of the United States. The study used...
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