In this paper, we investigate whether there are differences in the effect of instrument design 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. In general,...

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 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...