Comparing the Quality of Online to Interviewer-Gathered Survey Data: Preliminary Results from the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances Web Experiment

• Activity Number: 29 - SPEED: Survey Methods, Transportation Studies, SocioEconomics, and General Statistical Methods Part 1
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, July 28, 2019 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Richard Windle*
• Companies: Federal Reserve Board
• Keywords: financial; survey; data; quality; online; methods

Abstract

Multiple factors can affect the quality of data gathered by a survey: question wording, respondent education, and even design choices in field materials. As the world increases its use of the internet, the temptation to transform surveys traditionally conducted by interviewers into self-administered web surveys grows, but what effect will this have on data quality? Could complex data gathered via this new method less accurately describe the real world, and thus reduce the ability of data to have a positive impact? To answer these questions, a portion of the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances was administered online for a subsample of 200 respondents, and a comparison of the data quality generated from each method was conducted using a measure based on post-collection data editing certainty.