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Public Opinion Quarterly Advance Access originally published online on April 2, 2009
Public Opinion Quarterly 2009 73(1):74-97; doi:10.1093/poq/nfp014
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Survey Breakoff

Andy Peytchev

Address correspondence to Andy Peytchev; e-mail: andrey{at}umich.edu.

Survey respondents may start the survey but fail to complete it, resulting in breakoff. This behavior occurs in interviewer-administered surveys but it occurs at high rates in web surveys, necessitating further attention. Breakoff is one of multiple response behaviors, each of which can be affected by unique and common causes. We present a framework within which to study different response behaviors, unit nonresponse, breakoff, item nonresponse, and measurement properties, and the factors affecting them in web surveys. Theories within this framework for explaining breakoff are proposed and tested. Features within the survey that are only seen after starting are predictive of breakoff rate, distinguishing this behavior from unit nonresponse. Education, a proxy for respondent cognitive sophistication, was significantly related to breakoff rates. Furthermore, respondents who broke off did not seem inattentive, supporting further efforts in their retention. Question and questionnaire design characteristics were predictive of survey breakoff, and placed in the context of the survey response process model and respondent burden. Implications for survey design and needs for future work are discussed.

ANDY PEYTCHEV the RTI International, 3040 Cornwallis Rd., Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA. This article is part of the author's dissertation research in the Survey Methodology Program at the University of Michigan. The author is particularly grateful to his committee members—Mick Couper, Bob Groves, Trivellore Raghunathan, and Norbert Schwarz. Appreciation is also given to Roger Tourangeau, Mick Couper, Fred Conrad, and Reg Baker for making this research possible. This work was supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation (Grant SES-0106222) and the National Institutes of Health (Grant R01 HD041386-01A1). The author also thanks the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their thoughtful comments.


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