Online surveys as discourse context: Response practices and recipient design

Area of Science:

• Conversation Analysis
• Discourse Analysis
• Survey Methodology
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Existing research primarily focuses on the interactional aspects of telephone survey interviews.
• Written online surveys have been under-examined as a form of talk-in-interaction within conversation and discourse analysis.
• Traditional analysis of online survey responses often overlooks precise linguistic and turn-constructional practices.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate open-ended text responses in online surveys through a conversation analytic and discourse analytic lens.
• To examine how survey respondents formulate multi-unit responses and utilize discourse markers in online survey interactions.
• To determine if online survey responses can be considered a valid data source for conversation analytic inquiry.

Main Methods:

• Application of conversation analysis and discourse analysis to open-ended text responses from online surveys.
• Focus on specific turn constructional practices, including multi-unit response formulation.
• Analysis of the use of turn-initial discourse markers by survey respondents.

Main Results:

• Online survey respondents employ precise turn constructional practices similar to those in face-to-face or telephone survey interactions.
• Respondents formulate multi-unit responses and use discourse markers in online text, mirroring spoken conversational patterns.
• The study demonstrates that online survey responses are a viable source for conversation analytic research.

Conclusions:

• Online surveys, when analyzed through conversation and discourse analysis, offer valuable insights into interactional practices.
• The findings support the use of online survey data for examining how individuals construct responses in a written, interactive context.
• This research expands the scope of conversation analysis to include digital, text-based survey interactions.