Including QR Codes on survey recruitment materials may be one method to reduce burden and encourage participation. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a resurgence of QR Code use, so it is reasonable to assume they may now also be effective in survey outreach. In this article, we examine response by access mode (QR/URL) to better understand QR Code…

Social network research often depends on the willingness of respondents to provide personal information about themselves and alters. Survey design strategies that increase willingness to share this information are necessary for social network research to be feasible, especially when name generators are used for sampling because rosters are…

This study examined the feasibility of conducting a follow-up survey of panel attriters as a panel maintenance measure to investigate respondents' reasons for attrition, assessing their willingness to rejoin, and updating their addresses. We surveyed FReDA panelists who had not participated in two consecutive subwaves and were excluded from the…

This study analyzes the consequences of item nonresponse to the question about a household's total net income in the European Social Survey (2008-2018). We recognize two mechanisms in avoiding answering the income question: task complexity and question sensitivity, and apply multilevel logistic regressions to predict the probability of refusals or…

When conducting a postal survey, a traditional recommendation is to use paper postage stamps instead of an automated postage system, to make sure that invitations have a more personal and attractive appearance. In this research note, we investigate whether this traditional recommendation is still valid. In the autumn of 2020, a postal survey was…

Audit correspondence studies are field experiments that test for discriminatory behavior in active markets. Researchers measure discrimination by comparing how responsive individuals ("audited units") are to correspondences from different types of people. This article elaborates on the tradeoffs researchers face between sending audited…

This research analyzes the effectiveness of the list experiment and crosswise model in measuring self-plagiarism and data manipulation. Both methods were implemented in a large-scale survey of academics on social norms and academic misconduct. As the results lend little confidence about the effectiveness of the methods, researchers are best…

In a mixed-methods study on poverty in Germany, we conducted qualitative interviews and collected quantitative data on ego-centered networks using a name-generator approach and a single set of respondents. Based on the qualitative data, we first developed a typology of negative ties and then evaluated which of these ties the name generator (on…

Surveys of egocentric networks are especially vulnerable to methods effects. This study combines a true experiment--random assignment of respondents to receive essentially identical questions from either an in-person interviewer or an online survey--with audio recordings of the in-person interviews. We asked over 850 respondents from a general…

Transactional validity, a common approach in participatory research, is attained when preliminary analyses of research results are discussed with research participants and their feedback is incorporated in the analysis. Member checking is one way of achieving transactional validity, which has been heralded as a stronger version of validity reached…

This study illustrates how the cognitive interviewing (CI) method can provide qualitative evidence of item, construct, and method bias in cross-cultural research. CI was conducted with participants from the Netherlands and Spain, who responded to quality-of-life (QoL) items included in international survey research projects. Qualitative findings…

Short message service (SMS or text messaging) surveys can collect data quickly and inexpensively. However, SMS surveys have space constraints that pose difficulties to questionnaire designers: Questions can only be 160 characters or less, surveys must be short, and many respondents use phones with small screens. In this article, we compare SMS and…

This article describes the results of an experiment designed to examine the impact of the use and amount of delayed unconditional incentives in a mixed mode (push to web) supplement on response rates, response mode, data quality, and sample bias. The supplement was administered to individuals who participate in the U.S. Panel Study of Income…

We discuss a recent development in the set theoretic analysis of data sets characterized by limited diversity. Ragin, in developing his Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), developed a standard analysis that produces parsimonious, intermediate, and complex Boolean solutions of truth tables. Schneider and Wagemann argue this standard analysis…

Conducting intervention studies with homeless populations can be difficult, particularly in terms of retaining participants across multiple sessions and locating them for subsequent follow-up assessments. Homeless youth are even more challenging to engage due to substance use, mental health problems, wariness of authority figures, and frequent…