Andrade Chittaranjan
Dept. of Clinical Psychopharmacology and Neurotoxicology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, Karnataka, India.
Indian J Psychol Med. 2020 Oct 13;42(6):575-576. doi: 10.1177/0253717620957496. eCollection 2020 Nov.
Online surveys are growing in popularity, perhaps because they are an easy, convenient, and inexpensive means of data collection. Online surveys commonly suffer from two serious methodological limitations: the population to which they are distributed cannot be described, and respondents with biases may select themselves into the sample. Research is of value only when the findings from a sample can be generalized to a meaningful population. When the population addressed by the survey cannot be described, and when the sample is contaminated by respondents with biases, findings from online surveys cannot be generalized and may therefore mislead.
在线调查越来越受欢迎,这可能是因为它们是一种简单、便捷且成本低廉的数据收集方式。在线调查通常存在两个严重的方法学局限性:无法描述其发放对象的总体,以及有偏差的受访者可能会自行选择进入样本。只有当样本的研究结果能够推广到有意义的总体时,研究才有价值。当调查所针对的总体无法描述,且样本被有偏差的受访者污染时,在线调查的结果就无法推广,因此可能会产生误导。