Measuring Political Knowledge in Telephone and Web Surveys: A Cross-National Comparison

Fast pace of technology changes makes conduction of high-quality web surveys increasingly easy, and performance of web surveys should be continuously monitored. In this article, a comparison is made of the results of telephone and web surveys of items measuring international news knowledge. The authors compare web surveys of general populations conducted in the United States and Norway in January 2009 with their telephone replications conducted in the same month. Results show rather small differences between web and telephone surveys, particularly in Norway. The authors discuss the results and make recommendations for use of web surveys and for future methodological research.