Purpose Despite the quick spread of the use of mobile devices in survey participation, there is still little knowledge about the potentialities and challenges that arise from this increase. The purpose of this paper is to study how respondents’ preferences drive their choice of a certain device when participating in surveys. Furthermore, this paper evaluates the tolerance of participants when specifically asked to use mobile devices and carry out other specific tasks, such as taking photographs. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected by surveys in Spain, Portugal and Latin America by Netquest, an online fieldwork company. Findings Netquest panellists still mainly preferred to participate in surveys using personal computers. Nevertheless, the use of tablets and smartphones in surveys showed an increasing trend; more panellists would prefer mobile devices, if the questionnaires were adapted to them. Most respondents were not opposed to the idea of participating in tasks such as taking photographs or sharing GPS information. Research limitations/implications The research concerns an opt-in online panel that covers a specific area. For probability-based panels and other areas the findings may be different. Practical implications The findings show that online access panels need to adapt their surveys to mobile devices to satisfy the increasing demand from respondents. This will also allow new, and potentially very interesting data collection methods. Originality/value This study contributes to survey methodology with updated findings focusing on a currently underexplored area. Furthermore, it provides commercial online panels with useful information to determine their future strategies.

Surveys have been used as main tool of data collection in many areas of research and for many years. However, the environment is changing increasingly quickly, creating new challenges and opportunities. This article argues that, in this new context, human memory limitations lead to inaccurate results when using surveys in order to study objective online behavior: People cannot recall everything they did. It therefore investigates the possibility of using, in addition to survey data, passive data from a tracking application (called a ''meter'') installed on participants' devices to register their online behavior. After evaluating the extent of some of the main drawbacks linked to passive data collection with a case study (Netquest metered panel in Spain), this article shows that the data from the web survey and the meter lead to very different results about the online behavior of the same sample of respondents, showing the need to combine several sources of data collection in the future.

Recently, Revilla and Saris (2012) showed, using data from the Netherlands, that the quality of responses (product of reliability and validity) in a probability-based online panel (LISS) can be similar to those from face-to-face surveys (European Social Survey round 4). However, most online panels select their members in a non probability-based way. They usually also send many more surveys per month to their panellists. Both together can generate professional respondents whose quality of answers may be different. Therefore, it makes sense to make a similar comparison for a nonprobability-based online panel (Netquest). Although differences are found, the similarities prevail. Overall, we cannot say that one of the surveys has higher estimates of quality, when defined as the product of reliability and validity, than the other.

In most countries the spread of mobile devices in the general population has increased very quickly in the last years, changing people's habits of accessing and using the web. Because of this, if one wants to involve respondents who access the web with the new devices, it is necessary to adapt web surveys to these devices. Nowadays, even if some probability-based online panels exist, the large majority of web surveys are done by means of non-probability-based panels (also called 'opt-in' or 'access' panels). People volunteer to participate in these panels. Thus, we can expect that the spread of mobile devices in these panels differs from the spread of mobile devices in the general population and is probably higher. However, little is known about the exact spread of different mobile devices (tablets and smartphones) within the population of panelists in access panels. Moreover, little knowledge has been acquired about which combination of devices panelists have, in general and in different countries. However, this is crucial information, since access panels represent the majority of web surveys and the participation of the panelists in these surveys is conditioned by the equipment they own. Therefore, in this chapter we study data How to cite this book chapter: