Web surveys have emerged as one of the most popular methods of data collection. The fact that they can be implemented quickly and potentially at a low cost has made them more and more popular. This transition to web surveys became even quicker since the Covid-19 pandemic started, due to the challenges to implement face-to-face surveys.

The increasing prevalence of web surveys brings both new challenges and opportunities. This course will offer practical guidance on the design and implementation of web surveys. It will delve into aspects crucial for ensuring survey representativeness and data quality, covering topics such as sampling methods, answer scales available in web surveys and their potential impact on the results, layout and programming decisions, and paradata utilization. Special emphasis will be placed on mobile participation, disparities between smartphone and PC responses, and leveraging innovative techniques to enhance data quality, including the use of new scales (e.g., emojis), requests for sharing new data types (e.g., visual data), and data fusion with other sources (e.g., digital traces).

In the lab sessions, you will have hands-on opportunities to apply the concepts learned in the lectures. In particular, you will program and implement a short survey using LimeSurvey and Google Forms and work with existing web (para)data using R.

 

Organizational structure of the course

The course will be divided into lectures (around 3 hours per day, divided into 2 or 3 sessions) and lab sessions (also around 3 hours per day, divided into 2 or 3 sessions) including demonstrations and hands-on exercises.

 

You will use LimeSurvey and Google Forms to program a short web survey, and you will work with some existing web survey data (including paradata). The course will involve both individual and small group work, depending on the exercises. You are encouraged to bring your own web survey projects to class if you are working on one. The instructor will be available for individual and group consultations and will provide support throughout the work on assignments.

By the end of the course, you will:

Software and hardware requirements

You will need to bring a laptop computer to successfully participate in this course.

 

We will use LimeSurvey and Google Forms to program short web surveys. We will also use R to do some simple data processing.

 

Please install R (https://cran.r-project.org/) and RStudio (https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/) on your device before the course starts. These are free and open source.

 

“For an introduction or refresher in R programming, you might consider enrolling in GESIS's two-day onsite course, “ Introduction to R for Data Analysis ” held in the first week of the Summer School in Cologne, or the four-day online workshop, “ Introduction to R ” offered in May.