Health related Bias in Websurveys of the General Oopulation

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Rainer Schnell
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 286253962

Websurveys have become increasingly important for both academic and commercial research. Considering some of the advantages of this data collection method this trend might seem to be reasonable. However, websurveys suffer from both undercoverage and nonresponse. Different weighting strategies are therefore used to adjust for these problems. Current weighting strategies are based on a number of assumptions which are rarely tested. The project will examine the effects of different weighting strategies on health related selection problems. In order to do so, health realted independent websurveys with different recruitment strategies and diffferent weighting strategies will be compared with aggregated hospital data. official statistics and data from high-ranked surveys.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants