ECSP – Embedded Client Side Paradata

Embedded Client Side Paradata (ECSP) is a tool that is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). It is based on different program languages, such as JavaScript and HTML. In general, ECSP can be implemented in web-based survey software solutions that provide access to the source code. It enables researchers to passively collect different kinds of client-side paradata, such as response times and scrolling events, and data from built-in sensors, such as Global Positioning System (GPS) and acceleration data. This is irrespective of the Internet browser and operating system used and allows researchers to investigate respondents’ completion behavior with respect to web surveys. Paradata and sensor data are collected at the page-level and are stored together with the actual survey data (i.e., respondents’ answers) in the same dataset.