Gummer, Tobias, and Anne-Sophie Oehrlein. 2022. "Using Google Trends Data to Learn More About Survey Participation." Social Science Computer Review online first. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/08944393221129179
As response rates continue to decline, the need to learn more about the survey participation process remains an important task for survey researchers. Search engine data may be one possible source for learning about what information some potential respondents are looking up about a survey when they are making a participation decision. In the present study, Tobias Gummer and Anne-Sophie Oehrlein explore the potential of search engine data for learning about survey participation and how it can inform survey design decisions. The authors drew on freely available Google Trends (GT) data to learn about the use of Google Search with respect to a case study: participation in the Family Research and Demographic Analysis (FReDA) panel survey. The authors show that some potential respondents were using Google Search to gather information on the FReDA survey. They also show that the additional data obtained via GT can help survey researchers to discover topics of interest to respondents and geographically stratified search patterns. Moreover, the authors introduce different approaches for obtaining data via GT, discuss the challenges that come with these data, and close with practical recommendations on how survey researchers might utilize GT data to learn about survey participation.