RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

228 INTERNET-BASED RESEARCH AND COMPUTER USAGE
deliberate non-response (e.g. if they do not wish
to reveal particular information, or if, in fact, the
question does not apply to them, or if they do not
know the answer). Hence the advice of Dillman
et al. (1999)istoavoidthispractice.Oneway
to address this matter is to give respondents the
opportunity to answer an item with ‘prefer not
to answer’ or ‘don’t know’. The point that relates
to this is that it is much easier for participants
in a web-based survey to abandon the survey – a
simple click of a button – so more attention has to
be given to keeping them participating than in a
paper-based survey.
Redline et al. (2002) suggest that branching
instructions (e.g. ‘skip to item 13’, ‘go to item 10’;
‘if ‘‘yes’’ go to item 12, if ‘‘no’’ then continue’)
can create problems in web-based surveys, as
respondents may skip over items and series of
questions that they should have addressed. This
concerns the location of the instruction (e.g. to
the right of the item, underneath the item, to the
right of the answer box). Locating the instruction
too far to the right of the answer box (e.g. more
than nine characters of text to the right) can
mean that it is outside the foveal view (2 degrees)
of the respondent’s vision and, hence, can be
overlooked. Further, they report that having a
branching instruction in the same font size and
colour as the rest of the text can result in it
being regarded as unimportant, not least because
respondents frequently expect the completion of
aformtobeeasierthanitactuallyis.Hencethey
advocate making the instruction easier to detect
by locating it within the natural field of vision of
the reader, printing it in a large font to make it
bolder, and using a different colour. They report
that, for the most part, branching instruction errors
occur because they are overlooked and respondents
are unaware of them rather than deliberately
disregarding them (Redline et al. 2002: 18).
The researchers also investigated a range of
other variables that impacted on the success of
using branching programmes, and reported the
following:
The number of words in the question has an
impact on the respondent: the greater the
number of words the less is the likelihood
of correct branching processing by the reader,
as the respondent is too absorbed with the
question rather than with the instructions.
Using large fonts, strategies and verbal
design to draw attention to branching
instructions leads to greater observance of these
instructions.
The number of answer categories can exert
an effect on the respondent: more than seven
categories and the respondent may make errors
and also overlook branching instructions.
Having to read branching instructions at
the same time as looking at answer
categories results in overlooking the branching
instructions.
Locating the branching instruction next to the
final category of a series of answer boxes is
amuchsaferguaranteeofitbeingobserved
than placing it further up a list; this may
mean changing the order of the list of response
categories, so that the final category naturally
leads to the branching instruction.
Branching instructions should be placed where
they are to be used and where they can be seen.
Response-order effects operate in surveys, such
that respondents in a self-administered survey
tend to choose earlier items in a list rather than
later items in a list (the primacy effect), thereby
erroneously acting on branching instructions
that appear with later items in a list.
Questions with alternating branches (i.e. more
than one branch) may be forgotten by the time
they need to be acted upon after respondents
have completed an item.
If every answer has a branch then respondents
may overlook the instructions for branching as
all the branches appear to be similar.
If respondents are required to write an openended
response this may cause them to
overlook a branching instruction as they are so
absorbed in composing their own response and
the branching instruction may be out of their
field of vision when writing in their answer.
Items that are located at the bottom of a page
are more likely to elicit a non-response than
items further up a page, hence if branching