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47 Soc. F. 335 (1968-1969)
Questionnaire Response Rate: A Methodological Analysis

handle is hein.journals/josf47 and id is 345 raw text is: RESEARCH NOTES QUESTIONNAIRE RESPONSE RATE: A METHODOLOGICAL ANALYSIS DEAN J. CHAMPION Uiiversity of Tennessee The mailed questionnaire has been used in social research for at least 40 years. The literature is replete with evidence showing the advantages and disadvan- tages of it as opposed to other forms of data collection.' A critical variable often related to the use of the mailed questionnaire is response rate. While most researchers agree that there are many important factors which can affect the response rate in any given mailing, there remain several unresolved issues pertaining to the differential effects of these factors. Survey researchers are exposed to a wide variety of suggestions when it comes to contact- ing respondents by mail. Studies emphasizing questionnaire content indicate that response rates are biased by respondents who are strongly interested in the topic under investigation and have firm opinions about it.2 In an early study on the subject, Katz and Cantril3 found that 1 Don Cahalan, Effectiveness of a Mail Ques- tionnaire Technique in the Army, Public Opinion Quarterly, 15 (Fall 1951), pp. 575-578; H. A. Edgerton, S. H. Britt, and R. M. Norman. Ob- jective Differences Among Types of Respondents to a Mail Questionnaire, American Sociological Review, 12 (August 1947), pp. 435-444; Arnold Linsky, A Factorial Experiment in Inducing Responses to a Mail Questionnaire, Sociology and Social Research, 49 (January 1965), pp. 183-189; R. B. Franzen, and Paul F. Lazarsfeld. Mail Questionnaires as a Research Problem, Journal of Psychology, 20 (July 1945), pp. 293-320; D. S. Longworth, Uses of the Mail Questionnaire, American Sociological Review, 18 (April 1953), pp. 310-313; and Stanley Robin, A Procedure for Securing Returns to Mail Questionnaires, Sociol- ogy and Social Research, 50 (October 1965)., pp. 24-35. 2 Franzen, and Lazarsfeld, op. cit. 3D. Katz, and H. Cantril, Public Opinion Polls, Sociometry, 1 (April 1937), pp. 155-179. ALAN M. SEAR Purdue University people with intense opinions tended to re- spond to a questionnaire ballot with greater frequency than persons holding moderate or neutral opinions. More recently, Boek and Lade4 and others have found that an unusually high return to a post-card questionnaire (86 percent) might be attributed to the intense interest which the respondents had in the subject matter of the questionnaire. Of course, this evaluation presupposes some rather exten- sive knowledge of the population under investi- gation and indicates the researcher attempted to juxtaposition questionnaire content with re- spondent preference. It seems more, practical. to pay closer atten- tion to those variables over which the re- searcher can exercise greater control. Some extrinsic factors frequently associated with higher rates of return of a mailed questionnaire which the researcher may control include years of schooling and socioeconomic status (SES). Also, such methodological factors as question- naire length, type of postage used, and the nature of incentives to respond (i.e., a prize for returning the completed questionnaire), fall directly under the researcher's control. The purpose of this study is to investigate the differential effects of three important variables on response rates of a mailed questionnaire. The variables which will be examined here include: 1. The length of the questionnaire mailed to the respondent. 2. The type of postage employed in both the initial contact and in the follow-up. 4 Walter Boek and James Lade, A Test of the Usefulness of the Post Card Technique in a Mail Questionnaire Study, Public Opinion Quarterly, 27 (Summer, 1963), pp. 299-302.

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