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Web Survey Bibliography

Title Encouraging Web Responses among College Students: An Experiment
Year 2007
Access date 23.05.2007
Abstract

Researchers often find themselves in a difficult situation. On the one hand, declining response rates have researchers looking for ways to encourage survey participation but, on the other, controlling costs is paramount. Offering multiple modes is often proposed as a possible solution for increasing response rates, yet, adding options can add, rather than minimize, costs. In a current baseline study of college students, we are exploring whether initially offering students one mode, web, will yield the same completion rate as initially offering multiple modes (web, paper, and phone). We randomly assigned 4,500 college seniors al seven universities into one of two groups. Group 1 received a paper questionnaire and a letter inviting them to complete the questionnaire by mail, web or telephone. Group 2 received only an invitation letter that encouraged students to complete the questionnaire by web. Four weeks after the initial contact, all students, regardless of the experimental status, will receive a packet containing a paper questionnaire, and three weeks after that, we will call all nonrespondents, We will be comparing the two groups on these cost and response rate issues: 1} how do the completion rates compare after the initial four weeks? 2) how does the number of students requiring telephone follow-up differ by initial experimental condition? and, 3) what percentage of the overall completes are completed by telephone? A higher initial completion rate reduces follow-up costs but these savings can be lost if more telephone follow-up is required, This is a real possibility since recent research also suggests that mail and web modes tend to replace one another, while not reducing the portion of nonrespondents requiring telephone follow-up. The results of this experiment will determine whether the paper questionnaire option will be dropped from the follow-up study.

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Year of publication2007
Bibliographic typeConferences, workshops, tutorials, presentations
Full text availabilityAvailable on request
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Web survey bibliography - The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) 62th Annual Conference, 2007 (1)