Can information technology affects people’s behavior and opinion? A way to identify it.

Abstract The scope of this study is to determine if the information technology can affects people’s behavior and or opinion. A way to identify it is using a tool to collect answers using or not using the technology. How? Making surveys. Nowadays there are 2 main categories of survey administration. The traditional paper data collection method and the relatively new web-based method. Although the two acquisition processes are completely different, each one has its own advantages and disadvantages, facility or difficulty, adoption or not. The scope of this paper is to study factors that affect each survey type and find the preferable questionnaire administration method. To compare survey media, responses from University students were taken. We tried to investigate the reliability, honesty, item mean, response rate, completeness of data, and also made factor analysis comparisons across survey media. The experiment was applied on the same audience and theme, using different methods. From the data analyses the results between paper and online media in this experiment appear to be major, and seem to have a significant effect on overall results. The majority of differences found on questions related with personal criticism (where anonymity plays a significant role), and on response rates.