• Survey Research
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.1-28
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• 2010

This paper reports the results of the 2009 Internet volunteer panel version of the social survey conducted by Statistics Korea (Korea National Statistical Office). Authors identify socio-psychological characteristics of Internet survey volunteers and present quantitative evaluation of the propensity adjustment weighting method intended to remove Internet sample bias. The nine criteria used for propensity adjustment were regions, urban/rural, gender, age, education, consumer satisfaction, views on income distribution, newspaper access and Internet news access. Propensity adjustment weighting based on the logit model and rim weights were applied to the online survey of 2,903 respondents using the face-to-face area sample data of 37,049 respondents as reference. A total of 106 items were used for evaluating the propensity adjustment weighting methods. The results showed that in 80% of survey items the propensity adjustment weighting yielded better estimates compared to simple demographic weighting. This suggests that Internet surveys by volunteer panels are useful for conducting the general social study in Korea. The reference survey data for this study contains several items on social-psychological behaviors and attitudes, is large in size and obtained by probability sampling. Thus it may be utilized in propensity adjustment of other Internet surveys.