The impact of pictures on Best-Worst Scaling in web surveys

Summary

Motivation and burden are two of the most important aspects that influence response rates and dropouts in online surveys. As a result, we focus our analyses on how pictures and Best Worst Scaling (BWS), two solutions for each problem, interact in the Web medium. We use an experimental design that compares a BWS with pictures, the experimental group, and BWS without pictures, the control group. Results show that pictures influence measurement of BWS in six out of 16 items. We also observe that Couper’s (2001) conclusion that concordant text and images have an accentuation effect while a discordant relationship between the two has an interference impact is partly true in our data. Eight out of the 16 items are at least partially influenced by the concordant/discordant variable while four fully respect this model. We conclude by discussing the impact of our findings and its limitations.