Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches

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.