Effects of Applying Multimedia and Dialogue Boxes to Web Survey Design

Effects of Applying Multimedia and Dialogue Boxes to Web Survey Design

Web surveys are performed in a less controlled Internet environment in which survey quality is deteriorated because of unfriendly survey designs that cause an unpleasant mental response among those completing the surveys. This paper suggests two new elements for designing web surveys；namely, multimedia (MM) and dialogue box (DB). The former can deliver messages to respondents more effectively, and the latter can enrich a text-only survey format. This research investigates how MM and DB influence respondents’ response burden (RB), content perception (CP), and involvement (IN). A low RB and a high IN can increase user willingness to participate, whereas a high CP can increase the validity of the user’s answers. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 280 college students in Taiwan. The respondents were placed in four groups: (1) TT, those using plain text to describe the survey and ask questions；(2) MT, those using multimedia to describe the survey and plain text to ask questions；(3) TD, those using plain text to describe the survey and dialogue to ask questions；and (4) MD, those using multimedia to describe the survey and dialogue to ask questions. Using ANOVA and t-test, the authors completed an investigation that revealed that MM enhances CP, improves IN, and lowers RB, whereas DB only lowers RB.