{"id":166436,"date":"2024-05-13T15:48:21","date_gmt":"2024-05-13T19:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/?post_type=decoded&p=166436"},"modified":"2024-05-13T15:48:23","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T19:48:23","slug":"measuring-partisanship-in-europe-how-online-survey-questions-compare-with-phone-polls","status":"publish","type":"decoded","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/decoded\/2024\/05\/13\/measuring-partisanship-in-europe-how-online-survey-questions-compare-with-phone-polls\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring partisanship in Europe: How online survey questions compare with phone polls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Pew
(Pew Research Center illustration; photos by Rasid Necati Aslim\/Anadolu, Pawel Libera\/LightRocket and Adam Berry via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The majority of Pew Research Center\u2019s international survey work is conducted either through face-to-face or telephone interviews. As the survey landscape changes internationally, we are exploring the possibility of using self-administered online polls in certain countries, as we do in the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we move our surveys online, we may need to make other changes so that data from new projects is comparable to data from older ones. For instance, online surveys do not use an interviewer, an important difference from our traditional in-person and phone surveys. Those differences could bias our results. Bridging the gap between interviewing formats raises many questions, so we embedded some experiments into recent surveys to get some answers. \u00ad\u00ad<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the sections below, we walk through an experiment where we tested online surveys against phone surveys, drawing on data from France, Germany and the United Kingdom. We compare the three ways we asked about partisanship on the web with a traditional measurement obtained over the phone, concluding with what we learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related:<\/em><\/strong> How adding a \u2018Don\u2019t know\u2019 response option can affect cross-national survey results<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How we\u2019ve asked about partisanship in past telephone surveys<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Our annual phone polls ask people in France, Germany and the UK an open-ended question about their partisan affiliation. In the UK, for example, a phone interviewer would ask a respondent, \u201cWhich political party do you feel closest to?\u201d then wait for a response and record the answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We compared three different online survey methods to see which one would most closely replicate our phone results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How we asked about partisanship in our new online survey experiments<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Open-ended questions<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first method we tested asked respondents about their partisan affiliation in an open-ended format. We gave people a textbox and asked them to enter the name of the party they feel closest to. One benefit of this method is that people can offer relatively new parties or alliances that we have yet to include in our lists and they won\u2019t feel limited by the options listed, even if an \u201cother, please specify\u201d box is included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But open-ends can be messy. They require a researcher to comb through them, standardizing spelling and making choices, such as whether saying things like \u201cthe right\u201d or the name of a leader should be counted together. In the UK, a respondent may say Tories, Conservatives, the Conservative Party, Rishi Sunak or other variations on these answers \u2013 and researchers have to determine what they meant and code it accordingly. This takes time and, in the case of France and Germany, some foreign language knowledge. Open-ended questions also tend to have higher nonresponse rates<\/a> than closed-ended questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closed-ended questions<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also asked about partisan affiliation using two different close-ended survey question formats. Each format listed the parties in a different order:<\/p>\n\n\n\n