ICES III - Johan Erikson1 Effects of offering web questionnaires as an option in enterprise surveys – The Swedish experience Johan Erikson Statistics Sweden

ICES III - Johan Erikson2 Disposition Background (The SIV tool and general strategies) Experience (take-up and efforts to raise it, re- design, data quality – a few case studies) Conclusions

ICES III - Johan Erikson3 The SIV tool Generalised tool Form construction, Administration, Security, Presentation on web Data base solution, pages generated ”on the fly” one at a time Dynamic in all aspects (pages, questions, rows and columns) Developed (ongoing) Used for both enterprise surveys, household surveys, surveys to agencies and municipalities Will be integrated to have three presentation tools: web, windows form (for telephone interviews), hand-held computers Up to now: used in 40+ enterprise surveys, 100+ surveys in total

ICES III - Johan Erikson4 General strategy Defensive strategy Paper form + opportunity to reply on the web Log-in information normally placed on the paper form and not on the cover letter Web questionnaires slightly re-designed to fit screen size rather than paper size Dynamic when possible (skip patterns, add rows and columns when necessary) Some (but mostly simple) edit checks Reminders – some have new paper form, some do not

ICES III - Johan Erikson5 Take-up With general strategy – take-up varies from less than 2% to more than 40% Normal take-up: 5-20% Surveys with high take-up: register updates, surveys that have had TDE as an option Take-up in monthly surveys: stable or rising Possible effort to raise take-up: No paper questionnaire (ordinary sending or reminder)

ICES III - Johan Erikson6 Take-up over time

ICES III - Johan Erikson7 Efforts to raise take-up ”LINDA” survey – wages (november) for specific individuals (longitudinal survey) – not all employees Normally, 1-10 individuals per enterprise Almost enterprises (27500 have 1-3 individuals) Experiment: 20 per cent of enterprises 1-4 indivisuals and 100% of enterprises 5-10 individuals were sent no paper questionnaire (will be sent at reminder, when the others will not be sent a new paper questionnaire)

ICES III - Johan Erikson8 Efforts to raise take-up

ICES III - Johan Erikson9 Efforts to raise take-up Development of new enterprises Experiment: No new paper form at reminder, extra push for web

ICES III - Johan Erikson10 Efforts to raise take-up The big step – eliminating paper forms 3-4 surveys Most enterprises use web when it´s the option given Paper form when active effort (phone call) Some extra efforts have been made on reminders Response rates have varied, from no change to small dips

ICES III - Johan Erikson11 Re-design Web as a third alternative – turnover statistics Before: paper/TDE Now: paper/TDE/Web Only one indicator (turnover) Monthly/quarterly statistic

ICES III - Johan Erikson12 Re-design

ICES III - Johan Erikson13 Data quality Data is scarce Based on editing after collection Ratio of objects showing at least one error signal Remember: not many edit checks in web questionnaire But: elementary edits (format, radio buttons allowing only one mark, automatic skip patterns) eliminate some errors Tendency is similar regardless of type of survey – ratio of objects with error signals is lower for web Slight but slow tendency of error rates to decrease over time

ICES III - Johan Erikson14 Data quality

ICES III - Johan Erikson15 Data quality

ICES III - Johan Erikson16 Conclusions Take-up with defensive strategy is rather low Take-up-rates may be influenced significantly Not sending paper questionnaires may reduce response rates Offering web as an alternative can raise electronic share of responses even when TDE is used as well Data quality tends to be somewhat higher on web than on paper – mostly because simple errors can be eliminated