Webinar: Quantifying the impact of web mode on analyses of data from Wave 8 of Understanding Society
In this webinar, Paul Clarke (ISER) will discuss the
consequences of Understanding Society’s decision to give participants the
option of completing the survey questionnaire online via their web browsers. He
will give some background about why the move to web is taking place, and
discuss why survey mode can make such a difference to the results we find.
Following this, Paul will formally define what is meant by a
mode effect and why these can be difficult to estimate – and why experiments
are needed – and briefly review evidence from other studies (including the
Understanding Society Innovation Panel) about the size of these effects; this
review will also discuss and critique the existing approaches to estimating
mode effects
He will then describe the experiment set up by the
Understanding Society team, give an overview of the ‘instrumental variable’
methods we use to estimate these effects, and how they addressed the challenge
of understanding the impact of web mode when there are a wide range of analyses
and statistical models they could use.
To illustrate what the Understanding Society team did, Paul
will take the user through two examples in which he estimates the mode effects,
interpret what these effects mean for data quality, and show the difference
that using web instead of face-to-face made to these analyses. The webinar will
finish by describing a simple way – using a random subsample of participants
who were interviewed face-to-face - for users to check whether they need to
worry about the effect of web mode, and what to do if they find one.