Improving Surveys with Paradata: Analytic Uses of Process Information

CHAPTER 11

PARADATA IN WEB SURVEYS

MARIO CALLEGARO

Google London, UK

11.1 SURVEY DATA TYPES

For a single survey instrument, it is possible to have up to four kinds of data: Substantive data (questionnaire results), Metadata, Paradata, and Auxiliary data (see Chapter 1 for more details):

Substantive data, also called numerical data (Mohler et al., 2008), are the core components of a survey—the results of a questionnaire that translates into a row of answer codes that populate a data file. Substantive data also contain recoded variables and recoded open-ended answers.

Metadata are data that describe the survey data, such as a codebook, that contains a description of the project, including the agency/firm, the dates in which the survey was in the field, and any other context information that can be relevant to interpret and use the dataset (Blank and Rasmussen, 2004).

Paradata (also called process data) are data about the process of answering the survey itself (Couper, 2000) and are collected at the respondent level (Kaczmirek, 2009, p. 79). In other words, a final dataset can contain the survey data, plus the survey paradata for each respondent. Given the fact that web surveys are self-administered, the paradata are generated by the respondents and their interaction with the survey instruments. Lastly, paradata are generally not consciously provided by the respondents (Kaczmirek, 2009, p. 79), an issue that has an effect on the privacy and ethics of online surveys and is discussed ...