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Web Survey Bibliography

Title Using Address Based Sampling to Survey the General Public by Mail vs. 'Web plus Mail'
Year 2010
Access date 23.08.2010
Abstract

The Internet is increasingly being used as a survey method but suffers from incomplete coverage of households and lack of an adequate sample frame for conducting general public surveys. However, with the development of near-comprehensive address-based sample (ABS) frames, such as the U.S. Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File (DSF), mail may become used much more frequently, particularly to send respondents an Internet survey. Yet it remains unclear as to  what procedures are most effective in using the DSF with mail and the Internet survey modes to obtain acceptable levels of non-response in statewide general public household surveys. The 2008 Washington Community Survey (WCS) provides an opportunity to examine these issues. The WCS was conducted by sampling from the DSF and asking people in nine different panels to respond by Internet and/or mail. Different implementation procedures were also tested to determine their impact on non-response. These include an Internet instruction card (vs. none), a $5 cash incentive (vs. none), and multiple ways of introducing the choice between Internet and mail. Statistical comparisons of the characteristics between WCS Internet and mail respondents, as well as between WCS Internet and mail respondents and the American Community Survey (ACS) respondents, determine whether differences exist and how representative different WCS respondents are of general public households in Washington. Overall, we found mail and Internet respondents are very different types of people but an Internet preference approach with a $5 incentive and a mail follow-up sent three weeks later can obtain reasonable response rates (46.3%) and levels of non-response error. A mail-only treatment, with a $5 incentive, obtained the highest response rates (56.7%) but also produced similar levels of nonresponse error as the Internet preference approach. Furthermore, neither mail nor Internet preference respondents were consistently representative of the general population.

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SESRC Technical Report - Homepage (abstract) / (full text)

Year of publication2010
Bibliographic typeReports, seminars
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Web survey bibliography - Reports, seminars (231)

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