The smartphone increase in web surveys, coupled with technological developments, provides novel opportunities for measuring attitudes. For example, smartphones allow the collection of voice instead of text answers by using the built-in microphone. This may facilitate answering questions with open answer formats resulting in richer information and higher data quality. So far, there is only a little body of research investigating voice and text answers to open questions. In this study, we therefore compare the linguistic and content characteristics of voice and text answers to open questions on sensitive topics. For this purpose, we ran an experiment in a smartphone survey ( N = 1001) and randomly assigned respondents to an answer format condition (text or voice). The findings indicate that voice answers have a higher number of words and a higher number of topics than their text counterparts. We find no differences regarding sentiments (or extremity of answers). Our study provides new insights into the linguistic and content characteristics of voice and text answers. Furthermore, it helps to evaluate the usefulness and usability of voice answers for future smartphone surveys.

中文翻译：

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打字还是说话？比较智能手机调查中敏感主题开放问题的文本和语音答案


智能手机在网络调查中的增加，加上技术的发展，为衡量态度提供了新的机会。例如，智能手机允许使用内置麦克风收集语音而不是文本答案。这可能有助于以开放的答案格式回答问题，从而获得更丰富的信息和更高的数据质量。到目前为止，只有一小部分研究调查了开放问题的语音和文本答案。因此，在本研究中，我们比较了敏感话题的开放性问题的语音和文本答案的语言和内容特征。为此，我们在智能手机调查中进行了一项实验（N = 1001），并将受访者随机分配给答案格式条件（文本或语音）。研究结果表明，语音答案比文本答案具有更多的单词数量和更多的主题数量。我们发现在情绪（或答案的极端）方面没有差异。我们的研究为语音和文本答案的语言和内容特征提供了新的见解。此外，它还有助于评估语音答案对于未来智能手机调查的有用性和可用性。