Effects of objective and perceived burden on response quality in web surveys

Respondent burden is considered a decisive factor affecting response quality in web surveys. To investigate the objective and perceived burden on web survey respondents and its effects on response quality, we conducted a web survey among members of a German online access panel using a questionnaire with a completely randomized question order and measures of perceived burden at four time points. We found that perceived burden increased only slightly during the survey, suggesting that objective burden―as measured by the position of a question in the questionnaire―has a modest impact on the level of perceived burden. Although the position of a question in the questionnaire also had little effect on response quality, higher perceived burden consistently resulted in lower response quality.