Publication type
Survey Futures Working Paper Series
Series Number
88
Series
Survey Futures Working Paper Series
Authors
Publication date
November 1, 2025
Summary:
Amid declining response rates and rising survey costs, identifying reliable and cost-effective data collection methods is crucial. During the COVID-19 pandemic, major social surveys began to adopt video interviewing as an alternative to in-person data collection. However, its impact on measurement quality remains underexplored. This study addresses this evident gap by comparing mode effects between video, web, and in-person survey modes, using data from the first large-scale experiment where 1,692 respondents were randomly assigned to one of these modes. We focus on two key measurement quality indicators: item non-response and response distribution.
Our results show that video interviews yielded slightly lower item non-response levels than in-person interviews, albeit these differences are almost negligible. While measurement differences in responses to survey questions between the interviewer-administered modes were minimal, significant differences were observed between video and web responses, particularly on sensitive items like mental wellbeing and financial difficulties. Our findings suggest that video interviews are comparable to in-person surveys, but they may also suffer from the usual social desirability biases associated to the interviewer presence. Overall, these results are promising and suggest that video interviewing could serve as a valuable complement or alternative to traditional face-to-face surveys
Subjects
Link
https://surveyfutures.net/working-papers/
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