WAPOR webinar March 2023: Reliability and Validity in Convenience-Sample Surveys

Online surveys of the general public are currently being conducted with two sorts of samples: (1) probability samples, recruited through RDD phone calls or face-to-face visits to respondents’ homes or lists of all residential addresses, or (2) groups of people who are not selected from the population of interest by probability sampling and instead volunteer to do occasional on-line surveys for money (e.g., in response to online ads or email invitations). Many studies have compared the accuracy of measurements obtained using these two sorts of samples. This presentation will review the various methods being used and compare the accuracy of their results. The talk will conclude by identifying optimal methods for survey data collection.