An Empirical Test of the Impact of Smartphones on Panel-based Online Data Collection

Online panel providers are confronted with an ever-increasing number of technical devices, operating systems and internet browsers with which panel members access the internet and retrieve emails. Mobile devices such as Smartphones offer a wide variety of innovative research designs by means of new participation modes, interview occasions and data sources. This beneficial “intentional” use of mobile devices as data collection mode is counterbalanced by the potential threat to data quality by “unintentional mobile respondents”.
Unintentional mobile respondents participate in a conventional online survey per mobile device. Especially the limitations inherent to Smartphones in terms of display size and data entry comfort raise concerns regarding the usefulness of mobile participations. But a rejection of mobile survey accesses may decrease the accessibility of surveys causing systematic sample biases.
The few empirical studies available do not yield conclusive results regarding the extent of unintentional mobile participations and their impact on data quality. The paper addresses both validity threats and reports results of four studies conducted in the German section of the online panel of Harris Interactive AG.