Australian Election Study Online, 2001

The study was designed to test the use of the web as a methodological tool for survey research in national election studies. The online survey ran a truncated set of questions from the Australian Election Study, 2001 that was conducted as a post-election mail-out and mail-back survey. The goal was to compare the results from this new form of polling methodology with those from the more established method to see how far the two modes yielded comparable results. As opinion polls become more costly to fund and response rates drop, survey researchers are looking for new and more cost effective ways to run election studies. Although the web is being increasingly used for opinion polling it has attracted significant criticism due to the non-probalistic nature of the samples it generates. The aim of this study was to subject web-based surveys to greater scientific scrutiny in order to assess their methods. The online survey replicates many questions from the previous Australian Election Studies, including a section on political and social institutions. Other sections cover the respondent's interest in the election campaign and politics, their past and present political affiliation, evaluation of parties and candidates, alignment with parties on various election issues, evaluation of the current economic situation, and attitudes to a range of election issues including immigration, refugees and asylum seekers, terrorism, taxation, unemployment, and workers entitlements. Background variables include level of education, employment status, occupation, type of employer, position at workplace, trade union membership, sex, age, own and parents' country of birth, parents' political preferences, religion, marital status, income, and where applicable, the occupation, trade union membership and political preference of the respondent's spouse.