After the introduction in Section 2, we very briefly sketch out current theoretical and empirical developments in the social sciences. In our view, they all point in the same direction: toward the acute and increasing need for multidisciplinary longitudinal data covering a wide range of living...

This paper presents results from an experimental manipulation of one versus multiple-items per screen format in a Web survey.The purpose of the experiment was to find out if a questionnaire s format influences how respondents provide answers in online questionnaires and if this is depending on...

Over the past decades there has been an increasing use of panel surveys at the household or individual level, instead of using independent cross-sections. Panel data have important advantages, but there are also two potential drawbacks: attrition bias and panel conditioning effects. Attrition...

This article shows that respondents gain meaning from visual cues in a web survey as well as from verbal cues (words).We manipulated the layout of a five point rating scale using verbal, graphical, numerical, and symbolic language. This paper extends the existing literature in four directions:...

In interpreting questions, respondents extract meaning from how the information in a questionnaire is shaped, spaced, and shaded. This makes it important to pay close attention to the arrangement of visual information on a questionnaire. Respondents follow simple heuristics in interpreting the...

In this paper we investigate whether there are differences in design effects between trained and fresh respondents. In three experiments, we varied the number of items on a screen, the choice of response categories, and the layout of a five point rating scale. We find that trained respondents...

In this study we use an information-processing perspective to explore the impact of response scales on respondents answers in a web survey.This paper has four innovations compared to the existing literature: research is based on a different mode of administration (web), we use an open-ended...

Panel conditioning arises if respondents are influenced by participation in previous surveys, such that their answers differ significantly from the answers of individuals who are interviewed for the first time. Having two panels—a trained one and a completely fresh one—created a unique...

This paper explores the determinants of individual well-being as measured by self-reported levels of satisfaction with income. Making full use of the panel data nature of the German Socio-Economic Panel, we provide empirical evidence for well-being depending on absolute and on relative levels of...

Social security entitlements are a substantial source of wealth that grows in importance over the individual's lifecycle. Despite its quantitative relevance, social security wealth has been thus far omitted from wealth inequality analyses. In Germany, it is the lack of adequate micro data that...