Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches

(Brent) #1
SURVEY RESEARCH

EXPANSION BOX 10

Ten Ways to Increase Mail
Questionnaire Response


  1. Address the questionnaire to a specific person, not
    “Occupant,” and send it first class.

  2. Include a carefully written, dated cover letter on
    letterhead stationery. In it, request respondent co-
    operation, guarantee confidentiality, explain the
    purpose of the survey, and give the researcher’s
    name and phone number.
    3.Alwaysinclude a postage-paid, addressed return
    envelope.

  3. The questionnaire should have a neat, attractive lay-
    out and reasonable page length.

  4. The questionnaire should be professionally printed,
    be easy to read, and have clear instructions.

  5. Send two follow-up reminder letters to those not
    responding. The first should arrive about one week
    after sending the questionnaire, the second a week
    later. Gently ask for cooperation again and offer to
    send another questionnaire.

  6. Do not send questionnaires during major holiday
    periods.

  7. Do not put questions on the back page. Instead,
    leave a blank space and ask the respondent for
    general comments.

  8. Sponsors that are local and are seen as legitimate
    (e.g., government agencies, universities, large firms)
    get a better response.

  9. Include a small monetary inducement ($1) if
    possible.


esteem, material incentives, and emotional rew-
ards) for cooperation.
Leverage saliency theory holds that the
salience or interest/motivation varies by respondent.
Different people value, either positively or nega-
tively, specific aspects of the survey process differ-
ently (e.g., length of time, topic of survey, sponsor).
To maximize survey cooperation, we need to iden-
tify and present positively valued aspects early in
the survey process. Two practical implications
are sponsorship and tailoring. Sponsorshiprefers
to the organization that conducts or pays for the sur-
vey. Tailoringoccurs when interviewers adjust
what they say in an introduction to specific respon-
dents,highlighting what they believe will encour-
age a respondent to cooperate. Tailoring is achieved
by training survey interviewers to be sensitive to a
range of household types and concerns so they
can “read” the setting and the various verbal and
nonverbal cues. Interviewers should be able to
shift quickly to alternative scripts for persuading a
respondent and tailor the persuasion to a specific
respondent.^49


Completion Rate.Dillman (2000:252) reports
higher self-administered questionnaire completion
rates if someone is personally handed the question-
naire as opposed to receiving it on the doorstep or
via the mail. He was able to achieve response rates
of 77 percent with a combination of personally
handing a questionnaire to a respondent, sending
two follow-up reminders, and including a monetary
incentive for completion (compared to 53 to 71 per-
cent rates when one or more technique was not
included).

Total Response Rate.A large body of literature
examines how to increase response rates for mail
questionnaires (see Expansion Box 10, Ten Ways to
Increase Mail Questionnaire Response).^50
A meta-analysis of 115 articles on mail survey
responses taken from 25 journals published
between 1940 and 1988 revealed that cover letters,
questionnaires of four pages or less, a return enve-
lope with postage, and a small monetary reward all
increase returns (Yammarino et al., 1991). Another
meta-analysis comparing mail with Web surveys
found that mail surveys have higher response rates.

Leverage saliency theory A hypothesis of survey
research cooperation that states that different respon-
dents find different aspects of a survey interview to be
salient and decide whether to cooperate based on dif-
ferent specific aspects of the interview.
Tailoring Encouraging a respondent’s cooperation in
survey research interviews by having interviewers
highlight specific aspects of the interview that a respon-
dent finds salient and values positively.
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