Swetlana Sudheimer

Paradata, such as user agent strings (UAS), provide us with important client-side information about the technical conditions of web surveys. If due to different reasons for example data protection issues UAS are not available, one may directly ask survey participants for the required data. Until now it is unclear whether the validity of these self-reported paradata is determined by participants’ general attitudes towards surveys, their willingness to participate and – in connection with technically demanding questions – distraction while answering. To shed light into the question what predicts the consistency between UAS and self-reported paradata, we use the HISBUS Online Access Panel. The sample comprised 3.137 members with UAS...

Besides others, general attitudes towards surveys are part of respondent’s motivation for survey participation. There is empirical evidence that these attitudes do predict participant’s willingness to perform supportively during (online) surveys (de Leeuw et al. 2017; Jungermann/Stocké 2017; Stocké 2006). Hence, the Survey Attitude Scale (SAS) as proposed by de Leeuw et al. (2010) differentiates between three dimensions: (i) survey enjoyment, (ii) survey value, and (iii) survey burden. Referring to de Leeuw et al. 2017, we investigate into the question whether the SAS measurements can be compared across different online survey samples of students from German Higher Education Institutions (HEI).