Article
Invitation Design Elements in Web Surveys – Can One Ignore Interactions?
This paper investigates the effects on response and breakoff rates in Web surveys of e-mail invitation design elements including: subject line, estimated survey duration, and invitation length. The analysis is focused not only on the main effects, but also on an issue which has not yet been studied systematically: interaction effects between these design elements. A factorial complete block design Web experiment – among students, faculty, and administrative staff at the Higher School of Economics in Russia – varying the estimated length of the survey (10 vs. 20 minutes), subject line (formal “monitoring” vs. informal “help” request), and invitation length (short vs. long) was conducted. We discuss the results of the experiment and argue that we should not ignore interaction effects between design elements to understand response in Web surveys more thoroughly.
This paper explores the moderator effect of firm size on the relation between different intangible resources and companies' performance. By analysing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and large companies, the authors examine the differences in the employment of six types of intangible resources: human resources, management resource capabilities, innovation and internal process capabilities, customer loyalty and networking capabilities. Dummy regression is applied to establish the differential effect in the impact of these intangibles on firm performance, measured by return on assets (ROA). This study provides econometric justification using a database of more than 1,400 European public companies. The time period for the investigated data covers ten years, from 2004 to 2013. The findings revealed that SMEs have less endowment of almost all of the analysed intangible resources. At the same time, in comparison with large companies, SMEs benefit more from developing human resources, innovation and internal process capabilities.
The considerable growth in the number of smart mobile devices with a fast Internet connection provides new challenges for survey researchers. In this article, I compare the data quality between two survey modes: self-administered web surveys conducted via personal computer and those conducted via mobile phones. Data quality is compared based on five indicators: (a) completion rates, (b) response order effects, (c) social desirability, (d) non-substantive responses, and (e) length of open answers. I hypothesized that mobile web surveys would result in lower completion rates, stronger response order effects, and less elaborate answers to open-ended questions. No difference was expected in the level of reporting in sensitive items and in the rate of non-substantive responses. To test the assumptions, an experiment with two survey modes was conducted using a volunteer online access panel in Russia. As expected, mobile web was associated with a lower completion rate, shorter length of open answers, and similar level of socially undesirable and non-substantive responses. However, no stronger primacy effects in mobile web survey mode were found.
A large number of findings in survey research suggest that responses to sensitive questions are situational and can vary in relation to context. The methodological literature demonstrates that social desirability biases are less prevalent in self-administered surveys, particularly in Web surveys, when there is no interviewer and less risk of presenting oneself in an unfavorable light. Since there is a growing number of users of mobile Web browsers, we focused our study on the effects of different devices (PC or cell phone) in Web surveys on the respondents’ willingness to report sensitive information. To reduce selection bias, we carried out a two-wave cross-over experiment using a volunteer online access-panel in Russia. Participants were asked to complete the questionnaire in both survey modes: PC and mobile Web survey. We hypothesized that features of mobile Web usage may affect response accuracy and lead to more socially desirable responses compared to the PC Web survey mode. We found significant differences in the reporting of alcohol consumption by mode, consistent with our hypothesis. But other sensitive questions did not show similar effects. We also found that the presence of familiar bystanders had an impact on the responses, while the presence of strangers did not have any significant effect in either survey mode. Contrary to expectations, we did not find evidence of a positive impact of completing the questionnaire at home and trust in data confidentiality on the level of reporting. These results could help survey practitioners to design and improve data quality in Web surveys completed on different devices.
In 2006, Russia amended its competition law and added the concepts of ‘collective dominance’ and its abuse. This was seen as an attempt to address the common problem of ‘conscious parallelism’ among firms in concentrated industries. Critics feared that the enforcement of this provision would become tantamount to government regulation of prices. In this paper we examine the enforcement experience to date, looking especially closely at sanctions imposed on firms in the oil industry. Some difficulties and complications experienced in enforcement are analysed, and some alternative strategies for addressing anticompetitive behaviour in concentrated industries discussed.
This article is talking about state management and cultural policy, their nature and content in term of the new tendency - development of postindustrial society. It mentioned here, that at the moment cultural policy is the base of regional political activity and that regions can get strong competitive advantage if they are able to implement cultural policy successfully. All these trends can produce elements of new economic development.