Designing and implementing an experimental survey on knowledge and perceptions about alcohol warning labels

Objectives This paper describes the design and implementation of an online survey experiment to investigate the effects of alcohol warning labels on alcohol‐related knowledge, risk perceptions and intentions. Method The survey collected self‐reported data from 14 European countries through two waves of data collection with different recruitment strategies: dissemination via social media and public health agencies was followed by paid‐for Facebook ads. The latter strategy was adopted to achieve broader population representation. Post‐stratification weighting was used to match the sample to population demographics. Results The survey received over 34,000 visits and resulted in a sample size of 19,601 participants with complete data on key sociodemographic characteristics. The responses in the first wave were over‐representing females and higher educated people, thus the dissemination was complemented by the paid‐for Facebook ads targeting more diverse populations but had higher attrition rate. Conclusion Experiments can be integrated into general population surveys. Pan‐European results can be achieved with limited resources and a combination of sampling methods to compensate for different biases, and statistical adjustments.