Intercept surveys
Intercept surveys on the web are popup
surveys that frequently use systematic
sampling for every kth visitor to a website
or web page. These surveys seem to be most
useful as customer-satisfaction surveys or
marketing surveys. This type of systematic
sampling can provide information that isgeneralizable to particular populations, such
as those that visit a particular website/page.
The surveys can be restricted to only those
with certain IP (Internet Protocol) addresses,
allowing one to target more specific subsets of
visitors, and ‘cookies’ can be used to restrict
the submission of multiple surveys from the
same computer.
A potential issue with this type of survey is
nonresponse. Coomly (2000) reports typical
response rates in the 15 to 30 percent range,
with the lowest response rates occurring
for poorly targeted and/or poorly designed
surveys. The highest response rates were
obtained for surveys that were relevant
to the individual, either in terms of the
particular survey questions or, in the case
of marketing surveys, the commercial brand
being surveyed.
As discussed in Couper (2000), an important
issue with intercept surveys is that
there is no way to assess nonresponse bias,
simply because no information is available on
those that choose not to complete a survey.
Coomly (2000) hypothesizes that responses
may be biased towards those who are more
satisfied with a particular product, brand, or
website; towards those web browsers who
are more computer and Internet savvy; and,
away from heavy Internet browsers who are
conditioned to ignore pop-ups.Another source
of nonresponse bias for intercept surveys
implemented as pop-up browser windows
may be pop-up blocker software, at least to
the extent that pop-up blocker software is
used differentially by various portions of the
web-browsing community.