TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2007//
TI  - Forced‐response in online surveys: Bias from reactance and an increase in sex‐specific dropout
JO  - Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
A1  - Stieger, Stefan
A1  - Reips, Ulf‐Dietrich
A1  - Voracek, Martin
SP  - 1653
EP  - 1660
VL  - 58
IS  - 11
N2  - Due to computer technology, a forced-response can be easily achieved in online questionnaires and is frequently used to gather complete datasets. An Internet-based quasi-experiment was conducted on the student server at the University of Vienna to study the influence of forced-response on dropout, demographic reports, and the content of the results. Forced-response was shown to substantially increase dropout. In addition, forced-response interacted with reported sex in eliminating a naturally occurring sex difference in dropout that was observed for the questionnaire whenever responses did not need to be enforced. Also reported sex turned out to have a mediating effect on time of dropout: Men dropped out earlier than did women. Further analyses revealed a reactance effect, as predicted by reactance theory. It is concluded that data from online questionnaires with forced-response designs are in danger of being hampered by dropout and reactance.<p /> 
LA  - 
SN  - 1532-2882
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.20651
ID  - ref1
ER  -