Understanding Respondents’ Attitudes Toward Web Paradata Use

Abstract

The collection and use of paradata is gaining in importance, especially in web surveys. From a research ethics’ perspective, respondents should be asked for their consent to the collection and use of web paradata. In this context, a positive attitude toward paradata use has been deemed to be a prerequisite for respondents’ willingness to share their paradata. The present study aimed to identify factors affecting respondents’ attitudes toward paradata use. Our findings revealed that adequately informing survey respondents about what paradata are and why they are used was an important determinant of their attitudes toward paradata use. Moreover, we found that respondents with a positive attitude toward the survey were more likely to have a favorable opinion of paradata use. Our findings suggest that a thorough understanding of the factors that contribute to a positive attitude toward paradata use provides the basis for improved paradata consent procedures, which in turn will increase rates of consent to paradata use and help attenuate the risk of consent bias in web surveys.

Privacy attitudes toward mouse-tracking paradata collection

“…To ascertain the effect of consent structure on willingness to participate and consent to data analysis, we computed either linear regression models with the numeric response as dependent variable, or logistic models with a dichotomized dependent variable, split mid-scale (as in Kunz and Gummer 2019). In either case, the contrast-coded predictors ically, respondents were asked to imagine another unrelated study where they could separately indicate their willingness to participate in mouse-tracking.…”

“…This leads to substantial degrees of freedom, for example concerning the question whether to make mouse-tracking a mandatory part of the overall study consent, or an additional opt-in. Similarly, researchers may want to explain and justify the need for mouse-tracking: If survey designers can communicate their reasoning and the benefits of mouse-tracking, respondents may decide whether they consider them commensurate to the potential privacy invasion, which could lead to overall higher consent rates (as in Kunz and Gummer 2019). This line of reasoning is formalized in Contextual Integrity theory (Nissenbaum 2011(Nissenbaum , 2004(Nissenbaum , 2018, which states that privacy violations occur when context-specific informational norms are broken.…”

“…Regarding the willingness to consent to paradata use, providing specific motivations or justifications proved to be somewhat advantageous in one of the studies (compared to providing no reasons), but not in the other. In a similar vein, Kunz and Gummer (2019) examined attitudes toward paradata use in web surveys for three types of data: the type of device used, time stamps for mouse clicks, and geolocation information. Providing a short definition of the paradata led to more favorable attitudes than simply listing the paradata that would be recorded.…”

“…So far, research on participants' privacy attitudes towards recording their interactions within an online survey has exclusively investigated keystrokes and timestamps as paradata sources (Couper and Singer 2013;Kunz and Gummer 2019). Herein, we focus on mouse-tracking, with the goal of investigating the willingness to participate in a study that collects participants' cursor movements, and to determine how best to frame data collection in light of benign (scientific) goals.…”

Informed consent for paradata use in web surveys

“…However, we know from related research on linking survey data to administrative records that opt-out consent procedures can lead to higher consent rates compared with opt-in procedures (Sakshaug et al, 2016). With regard to other design characteristics, previous studies have shown that a clear description of the type of web paradata collected and the purposes for which they are used generally helps to promote a positive attitude toward the collection and use of web paradata (Couper & Singer, 2013; Kunz & Gummer, 2019). Moreover, asking for web paradata consent at the beginning of the questionnaire rather than at the end seems to build trust, and therefore, results in higher consent rates (Couper & Singer, 2013; Sattelberger, 2015).…”