An Experiment to Test the Feasibility and Quality of a Web-Based Questionnaire of Teachers

The project is intended to provide information about the feasibility, in terms of both logistics and data quality, of altering the mode of survey administration in surveys of educational personnel (e.g. teachers, principals) from traditional mailed questionnaires to web-based questionnaires. The study will work through the logistics of obtaining email addresses for teachers and administering a web-based questionnaire to participants and will examine how the mode of administering a teacher questionnaire might affect (a) coverage error, (b) non-response error and (c) measurement error in the context of educational research. To investigate these issues, we will conduct a “mode” experiment in which 1,000 teachers are randomly assigned to either a web-based or mailed-based questionnaire.