Web and Mail Surveys with Special Populations: Results on Pretesting Leisure Survey (303375)

Keywords: questionnaire design, web questionnaires, mixed-mode, special populations

The Leisure Survey in Finland is a surveying the population’s leisure hobbies and social participation and changes in them, as well as participation in them by different population groups. The survey also produces information on the ratio between work and leisure, social relationships and importance attached to different spheres of life. The minimum age of the respondents have been 10 years and there is no maximum age limit. Updating frequency of this survey has been ten years on the average and we have time series from 1977, 1981, 1991, 2002. The next data collection will be in 2017.

So far, the data collection has been conducted with CAPI interviews among the population (including additional data sources from taxation registers and education registers). At the moment Statistics Finland is implementing web mode as one additional mode in mixed-mode survey designs and we have a growing need to test web questionnaires. The mode change will bring challenges to questionnaire design from mode change perspective as well as concerning special populations (children/elderly). Traditional CAPI questionnaire is not automatically applicable for self-administered web questionnaire. In 2016, we have been designing, pretesting and piloting mixed-mode data collection with web and mail questionnaires for Leisure Survey. The questionnaire is long so it produces problems concerning response burden as well as other mode issues that stem from mixing special populations with subject matter and web/mail data collection modes. The pretesting process on children and elderly people is discussed. The results from pretests are discussed and mode issues comparing the old CAPI questionnaire to web/mail questionnaire are addressed. Some solutions and recommendations from the pretests are proposed.