Introducing the Research Lab

With an increasing percentage of the world population using the Internet, it has become a popular medium to collect survey data. Web surveys are widely used instead of or together with traditional paper-based, telephone, and face-to-face surveys. These methods are becoming less effective in the light of increasing non-response rates, rising costs, and the increased use of cell phones compared to fixed-line phones typically used for telephone surveys. Solicited web surveys may partly offer a solution, as might volunteer web surveys.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the potential added value of web surveys in comparison with other survey modes has been investigated, among others by scientists such as Dillman and Couper. A main conclusion is that mode differences are minor and that the advantages of web-surveys go beyond those of traditional methods of data-collection.

WageIndicator employs a volunteer web survey, running since 2001. The section Research Lab has explanatory notes on methodological issues related to the web survey.

DANS (Data Archiving and Networked Services) funded this explanatory notes project (DANS, the Netherlands, reference nr KPD 2006-07).