Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/185259 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 11799
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
A general concern with the representativeness of online surveys is that they exclude the "offline" population that does not use the internet. We run a large-scale opinion survey with (1) onliners in web mode, (2) offliners in face-to-face mode, and (3) onliners in face-to-face mode. We find marked response differences between onliners and offliners in the mixed-mode setting (1 vs. 2). Response differences between onliners and offliners in the same face-to-face mode (2 vs. 3) disappear when controlling for background characteristics, indicating mode effects rather than unobserved population differences. Differences in background characteristics of onliners in the two modes (1 vs. 3) indicate that mode effects partly reflect sampling differences. In our setting, re-weighting online-survey observations appears a pragmatic solution when aiming at representativeness for the entire population.
Subjects: 
online survey
representativeness
mode effects
offliner
public opinion
JEL: 
C83
D91
I20
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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