WebSM event, Brussels, December 2005

Nov 29 2005

The WebSM Event

The EU founded stage of the WebSM (Web Survey Methodology) project ends by December 2005. The concluding presentation of the project will occur in Brussels on Wednesday, 7th December, Avenue Lloyd George 7, at the Slovenian Business and Research Association.

Programe:

• 14:30 Reception
• 14:45 Opening (dr. Zoran Stančič)
• 15:00 General presentation of the WebSM project (Vasja Vehovar)
• 15:30 Questions and Answer
• 15:45 Coffee break
• 16:00 Specifics of WebSM project activities
• Building on-line community (Vasja Vehovar)
• Overviews:
• Overview of sampling for Web surveys (Silvia Biffignandi)
• Overview of on-line survey design issues  (Lars Kaczmirek)
• Overview of Web survey software (Katja Lozar Manfreda)
• Overview of ethical issues (Lars Kaczmirek, Katja Lozar Manfreda)
• Discussion
• 17.00 Bilaterals
• 17:30 End

The participants are asked to send an email info@WebSM.org.

About Web Surveys

With the increasing role of information-communication technologies considerable changes occur also in social science research methods. The survey industry, in particular, is rapidly changing due to inexpensive Web surveys, which increasingly replace standard face-to-face and telephone surveys. (We may add here that this process is dramatically faster in US than it is in EU.) The easiness of doing Web surveys has also increased their popularity, so we can encounter Web surveys on almost every Web site. In addition, the academic and official surveys - even Censuses - are rapidly transitioning to the questionnaires that respondent can fill on the Web. However, with Web surveys a whole array of methodological issues arises, from statistical inference, nonresponse problems, and measurement errors to serious ethical issues associated with solicitation and data protection. The most problematic example are perhaps the co-called "access panel" or "Internet panels", where the self-recruited respondents can produce very questionable survey results. Due to uncritical media promotion such results may have a serious impact on public opinion. The mission of WebSM project is to promote research in Web survey methodology and to stimulate the exchange of results, publications, experiences, ethics, standards and best practices.

About WebSM Project

The WebSM project falls into the CONCERTED ACTIONS & THEMATIC NETWORKS project type within EU Fifth Framework programme. The three-year project (2002-2005) was coordinated by University of Ljubljana, Slovenia with partners from Germany (ZUMA), Italy (University of Bergamo) and Sweden (Linkoping University).

The main objectives of this thematic network are the building of an on-line scientific community related to Web survey methodology. This includes activities that accelerate excellence in European research on Web surveys and activities that stimulate the co-operation among European researchers as well as the dissemination of the knowledge in publicly available and user-friendly manners. The key results:

• the up-to-date web site with thousands of bibliographic entries and software solutions,
• the project become a globally recognized central information point in this field,
• innovative approaches applied in building on-line scientific community,
• the stimulation of further cooperation among European researchers, what enabled to prolong the life of the project in future years, i.e. beyond EU financing.

This article has been read 5144 times