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  • Virtual selves and Web surveys
    Lozar Manfreda, Katja ...
    With rapid transfer of many forms of social inquiry through structured questionnaires to the Web it is increasingly important to explore whether the Web is indeed a 'socially neutral' research tool ... as many believe. Because of the graphical and interactive nature of the Web and the context of global environment, social desirability effects in Web surveys may be different from with other self-administered methods, which usually reduce them. In addition, increased use of interactive services, such as multiple user domains, interactive chat rooms and interactive online games encourages widespread adoption of 'virtual personas' on the Web. It is thus important to explore howparticipation in such interactive services may mitigate potential benefits of the Web for social research. Our research explores whether those who are frequent participants in socalled 'alternate realities' on the Web are more likely to present their 'virtual personas' or their 'real selves' when answering questions in Web surveys. Users of interactive services are identified in a large national Web survey of Internet users in Slovenia withinthe project RIS (http://www.ris.org) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. They are asked a variety of questions relating to self-image that are known to be subject to social desirability bias. At the end of the survey they are asked for their telephone number. A random sample of respondents from the population of non-users of interactive services is also selected. Both groups are then administered a telephone survey, with the key selfpresentation and social desirability items replicated. We then comparethe responses to the telephone survey with those provided in the Web survey. Our hypothesis is that those who are regular participants in interactive services are more likely to present themselves in a different light on the Web than on the telephone, relative to the non-user group. 1 The joint work of researchers from the University of Ljubljana and the University of Michigan for this paper was sponsored by the Slovenian Ministry of Education, Science and Sport (Project SLO-US-2001/17) and National Science Foundation (Project "Cognitive Issues in the Design of Web Surveys. Supplementfor International Program: Virtual Selves and Web Surveys"). 2 Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; info@ris.org. 3Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, US. 4 University of Michigan, US.
    Vir: Developments in social science methodology (Str. [187]-213)
    Vrsta gradiva - prispevek na konferenci ; neleposlovje za odrasle
    Leto - 2002
    Jezik - angleški
    COBISS.SI-ID - 21481309

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