For hard-to-survey populations such as ethnic minorities and immigrants, increasing survey response rates is a crucial element of the fieldwork as these populations often show a higher likelihood of not participating compared with the native population. However, no study has so far compared different strategies for mobilisation within this group.…

Across waves of a panel survey, panel members are repeatedly exposed to the same or very similar survey questions, which might lead to learning effects. We used data from 24 waves of online interviews in a probability-based panel survey to investigate the positive and negative effects of becoming more familiar with the survey questions. We found…

Indirect questioning techniques such as the randomized response technique aim to control social desirability bias in surveys of sensitive topics. To improve upon previous indirect questioning techniques, we propose the new Cheating Detection Triangular Model. Similar to the Cheating Detection Model, it includes a mechanism for detecting…

Mixed-mode surveys are popular as they can save costs and maintain (or improve) response rates relative to single-mode surveys. Nevertheless, it is not yet clear how design decisions like survey mode or questionnaire length impact measurement quality. In this study, we compare measurement quality in an experiment of three distinct survey designs…

Survey interviewers can negatively affect survey data by introducing variance and bias into estimates. When investigating these interviewer effects, research typically focuses on interviewer sociodemographics with only a few studies examining the effects of characteristics that are not directly visible such as interviewer attitudes, opinions, and…

Careless responding is a bias in survey responses that disregards the actual item content, constituting a threat to the factor structure, reliability, and validity of psychological measurements. Different approaches have been proposed to detect aberrant responses such as probing questions that directly assess test-taking behavior (e.g., bogus…

Dropout rates from higher education programmes are high and constitute a problem for both the individual and society as a whole. To effectively develop measures to combat dropout, the reasons why students drop out of higher education need to be understood. Building on Tinto's integration model, this paper tests the extent to which students' social…

This article analyzes whether response patterns in surveys differ between the general population, regular immigrants, and recent refugees. Analyses show that the address quality of refugees contacted in the first wave of a panel study is worse than that of the general population, but of a similar quality to that of other recent immigrants. Once…

The factorial survey is an experimental design in which the researcher constructs varying descriptions of situations or individual persons (vignettes), which will be judged by respondents with regard to a particular aspect. Some researchers present vignettes in text format as short stories, others present the central information of vignettes in a…

Identifying illicit behavior in survey research is inherently problematic, since self-reports are untrustworthy. We argue that fraudulent interviewers can, however, be identified through statistical deviance of the distributional parameters of their interviews. We document that a high proportion of the variation in the data is due to the…

The measurement of political solidarities and related concepts is an important endeavor in numerous scientific disciplines, such as political and social science research. European surveys, such as the Eurobarometer, frequently measure these concepts for people's home country and Europe raising questions with respect to the order of precedence.…

A question asking for respondents' sex is one of the standard sociodemographic characteristics collected in a survey. Until now, it typically consisted of a simple question (e.g., "Are you…?") with two answer categories ("male" and "female"). In 2019, Germany implemented the additional sex designation divers for…

Ensuring comparability of Likert-style items across different countries is a widespread challenge for authors of large-scale international surveys. Using data from the EUROGRADUATE Pilot Survey, this study employs a series of latent class analyses to explore which response patterns emerge from self-assessment of acquired and required skills of…

Surveys continue to be a popular way of collecting data in the social sciences. But, despite their popularity they have a number of limitations including the possibility of changing the behaviour of respondents. Such mere-measure or question-behaviour effects can compromise the external validity of social data. In this article, we use digital…

Multifactorial survey experiments such as stated choice experiments are used more and more frequently in social science research. In this article, based on an experimental study on ethical and political consumption, we explore the potential of hybrid choice models to explicitly model latent psychological factors such as attitudes, overcoming a…