Mode Preferences in Business Surveys: Evidence from Germany

With the world-wide spread of the internet in the 1990s, the conduction of web or e-mailsurveys became popular in research. Although these surveys provide fast data collectionand reduced costs, results may suffer from biases due to the survey mode. While a varietyof studies concerning mode effects in household or individual surveys exists, only lessis known in case of business surveys. To give a contribution to this topic, we analyse alarge German business survey – the Ifo Business Survey – which is answered by about7,000 respondents each month since 1949. In this paper, we focus on three differentaspects with respect to the survey mode: data quality, respondents' profiles and responsebehavior. Our results show that e-mail or web surveys reduce nonresponse and are morelikely used by larger firms which operate in technology-related business areas.