TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ndashimye, Felix
A1  - Hebie, Oumarou
A1  - Tjaden, Jasper
T1  - Effectiveness of WhatsApp for measuring migration in follow-up phone surveys
BT  - lessons from a mode experiment in two low-income countries during COVID contact restrictions
JF  - Social science computer review
N2  - Phone surveys have increasingly become important data collection tools in developing countries, particularly in the context of sudden contact restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, there is limited evidence regarding the potential of the messenger service WhatsApp for remote data collection despite its large global coverage and expanding membership. WhatsApp may offer advantages in terms of reducing panel attrition and cutting survey costs. WhatsApp may offer additional benefits to migration scholars interested in cross-border migration behavior which is notoriously difficult to measure using conventional face-to-face surveys. In this field experiment, we compared the response rates between WhatsApp and interactive voice response (IVR) modes using a sample of 8446 contacts in Senegal and Guinea. At 12%, WhatsApp survey response rates were nearly eight percentage points lower than IVR survey response rates. However, WhatsApp offers higher survey completion rates, substantially lower costs and does not introduce more sample selection bias compared to IVR. We discuss the potential of WhatsApp surveys in low-income contexts and provide practical recommendations for field implementation.
KW  - WhatsApp
KW  - survey mode
KW  - migration
KW  - Covid
KW  - phone
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/08944393221111340
SN  - 0894-4393
SN  - 1552-8286
PB  - Sage
CY  - Thousand Oaks
ER  -