International Journal of Internet Science

A peer reviewed open access journal for empirical findings, methodology, and theory of social and behavioral science concerning the Internet and its implications for individuals, social groups, organizations, and society.

Handbook of Web Surveys¹ (Book Review)
Edith D. de Leeuw
Department of Methodology and Statistics, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Summary: On Christmas day 1990 Berners-Lee at CERN had a browser/editor, which he earlier had nicknamed WorldWideWeb, working on his NeXT computer and on that of a colleague's (Robert Cailliau), and was communicating over what we would now call the Internet1. That Christmas in 1990 is as important for survey methodologist as the ride of the first official mail coach in the UK in 1784, which enabled the very first mail survey by Sir John Sinclair and led to the Statistical Accounts of Scotland. This Christmas it will be the 21st birthday of the Web as we know it, although it took until summer 1991 before the program files became more generally available outside CERN, and it seems fitting that on Christmas Eve I am writing a review for the International Journal of Internet Science on the recently published Handbook of Web Surveys (Bethlehem & Biffignandi, 2012).
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¹Bethlehem, Jelke, & Biffignandi, Silvia (2012). Handbook of Web surveys. New York: Wiley.

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