Hannah Bucher - Would electoral research show different findings if we replaced probability face-to-face surveys with other types of surveys? - October 26, 2022
Would electoral research show different findings if we replaced
probability face-to-face surveys with other types of surveys?
Hannah Bucher is a PhD student in
survey research at the University of Mannheim and a research associate at GESIS
- Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences at the German Longitudinal Election
Study (GLES). Her research focuses on (non)probability
online surveys.
Abstract
As respondents of
nonprobability online surveys are self-selected, it is often questioned whether
results are comparable with those of probability face-to-face surveys. In this
paper, I compare a nonprobability online survey and a probability face-to-face
survey by the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) in terms of estimation
of benchmark statistics; distributions in 80 variables covering measures of
political attitudes and behavior; and differences in results of multivariate
analyses through a multimodel comparison with individual-level voter turnout as
the dependent variable. The probability face-to-face survey performs slightly
better in estimating characteristics with external benchmarks. There are
substantial differences in numerous variables and their associations in
multivariate models. Thus, switching from a probability face-to-face survey to
a nonprobability online survey affects empirical findings on individual-level
voter turnout and the conclusions drawn therefrom.