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. 2013 Jul 8:6:258.
doi: 10.1186/1756-0500-6-258.

Use of mobile devices to answer online surveys: implications for research

John A Cunningham  1 , Clayton Neighbors, Nicolas Bertholet, Christian S Hendershot
Affiliations

Use of mobile devices to answer online surveys: implications for research

John A Cunningham et al. BMC Res Notes. .

Abstract

Background: There is a growing use of mobile devices to access the Internet. We examined whether participants who used a mobile device to access a brief online survey were quicker to respond to the survey but also, less likely to complete it than participants using a traditional web browser.

Findings: Using data from a recently completed online intervention trial, we found that participants using mobile devices were quicker to access the survey but less likely to complete it compared to participants using a traditional web browser. More concerning, mobile device users were also less likely to respond to a request to complete a six week follow-up survey compared to those using traditional web browsers.

Conclusions: With roughly a third of participants using mobile devices to answer an online survey in this study, the impact of mobile device usage on survey completion rates is a concern.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01521078.

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References

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