This study is devoted to an analysis of presentation format differences in factorial survey experiments by the example of fear of crime as conceptualized by criminological theories. Guided by approaches from the psychology of cognition, we aim at a systematic comparison of the processing of factorial survey experiments based either on written or visual vignettes. We conducted a cross-sectional web survey in 2014 among n = 1449 students of a German university. Within the framework of a split ballot-experiment, we varied the presentation format of vignettes which were part of a factorial survey experiment. The results of our study show that dropout rates do not differ between presentation formats while processing time and self-reported fatigue are reduced when using visual vignettes.