Effects of objective and perceived burden on response quality in web surveys

Respondent burden is considered a decisive factor affecting response quality in web surveys. To investigate the objective and perceived burden on web survey respondents and its effects on response quality, we conducted a web survey among members of a German online access panel using a questionnaire with a completely randomized question order and measures of perceived burden at four time points. We found that perceived burden increased only slightly during the survey, suggesting that objective burden & horbar;as measured by the position of a question in the questionnaire & horbar;has a modest impact on the level of perceived burden. Although the position of a question in the questionnaire also had little effect on response quality, higher perceived burden consistently resulted in lower response quality.