Inf Syst Front (2017) 19:285–300
Table 3

291

Citizen perspective of open data
Frequency Percent

Lack of clarity in the availability of open data

189

36.6

Governments are opening up meaningful data.

107

20.7

Open data should offer insights into policy changes 220
Total
516

42.6
100.0

4 Methodology
This section is aimed at briefing the research design adopted
for this study. The questionnaire design, data collection process, and data analysis have been exclusively discussed within
this section.
4.1 Questionnaire design and data collection
A nationwide survey was undertaken to investigate citizens’
perceptions and intentions to use open data in the UK. The
data collection process was outsourced to a global sampling
solutions provider, SSI. The company targeted UK based citizens from their database, who had prior knowledge of open
data and open data systems by scripting the questionnaire onto
an online survey tool. The survey target was set at 500 respondents, and the survey company took ten days to gather and
return 516 responses, which were then used by the authors to
conduct the intended statistical analysis. The questionnaire
was divided into three parts. The first part of the questionnaire
comprised of demographic questions, and other yes/no type of
questions to gather basic information on the respondents’
awareness of open data and open data platforms. The second
part of the questionnaire required the respondents to choose
one of three premade statements under the following categories: their perspective of open data, accountability in government functions, citizen participation (citizen involvement with
the government in policy making and other decisions that
affect citizens) and interaction, citizen exposure to government spending, and overall impact of open data.
Questions related to the adjusted DOI model with five constructs were recorded in the third part of the questionnaire.
Each construct had three items/questions/statements, and the
respondents were required to mark their agreement with the
statement/question over a seven point Likert scale. The sevenpoint scales ranged from extremely disagree to extremely

agree. While most questions were based on the items that have
been previously used and tested in earlier research (Moore and
Benbasat 1991; Karahanna et al. 1999; Tan and Teo 2000;
Rijsdijk and Hultink 2003; Teo and Pok 2003; Shih and
Fang 2004; Meuter et al. 2005; Mallat et al. 2008;
Richardson 2009), these questions were considerably modified to suit the present context of open data and its impact on
citizens and businesses.
Within the questionnaire, the concept of open data was
explained along its availability and usability in a general
context. In brief, its presence was recorded as governments making data publicly available across a selection
of themes, such as local government finance, public
spending, department-specific business plans, and other
supporting geographical data to establish a level of transparency for facilitating informed decision making from
the citizens’ perspective. Examples of open data websites
such as data.gov.uk, Geostore, Geomatics Group,
MEDIN, and others were mentioned to understand
respondents’ awareness of open data and the platforms
making such data publicly available.
4.2 Pretesting the survey instrument
The survey questionnaire was pretested with ten respondents, who were by profession - academicians, researchers, and citizens having general knowledge of open
data. These test respondents were requested to fill questionnaires and report any possible errors that might have
been introduced in the overall questionnaire design, the
actual content, or any other difficulties hindering the understandability of the questions. Initially, a five point
likert scale was employed, but the academicians and researchers suggested a seven-point scale, as seven point
scales are known to assist in preventing the respondents
from being too neutral in their responses; and also, the
scales with more points are considered to be more reliable. The scaling was then changed to seven points on
the likert scale. Each item in the questionnaire was initially numbered alongside the shorthand of the construct
being measured. Academicians suggested the shorthand(s) be removed to prevent the construct from being
interpreted by the respondents, which might influence
their responses to a certain extent. The coding of the
items was then changed to prevent respondents from

Table 4 Accountability in
government functions
Public knowledge empowers democracy
Accountability is not real, and corruption in the government continues
Without benefits of open data being promoted, accountability will only remain a goal
Total

Frequency

Percent

99
210
207
516

19.2
40.7
40.1
100.0

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