Accounting for Complex Survey Designs: Strategies for Post-stratification and Weighting of Internet Surveys

Abstract

This chapter focuses on methods for analyzing data from Internet surveys with complex survey designs in order to draw inferences that can be generalized to a target population of interest. We first review the central design issues and approaches for dealing with representativeness challenges that researchers commonly face when using online polling for persuasion research. Then, using data from a survey experiment on support for immigration reform, we demonstrate the importance of the careful choice of auxiliary information used when constructing weights for ensuring the generalizability of findings from non-representative Internet surveys.