Web Survey Bibliography
Encouraging survey completion rates in a cost-efficient manner is typically a challenging endeavor. This paper will use data from the 2012 National Mental Health Services Survey (NMHSS) Locator Survey to examine whether one type of respondent reminder is more costefficient than another. The 2012 N-MHSS is sponsored by the federal government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and includes 22,455 mental health facilities across the United States. Data for this survey were collected using the Web mode with computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) follow-up over a four-month period. Using 4,300 randomly selected facilities equally divided between treatment and control groups, facilities received one of two types of reminder. A specialized reminder letter was mailed first class to the control group and to nonresponders in the non-experiment sample. The treatment group received CATI reminder calls, starting on the same day that the letters were mailed. A two-week field period was established to complete the reminder calls and to allow the letters to arrive at facilities. Our findings will include an analysis of the percentage of facilities that completed the survey during or shortly after the reminder period and an examination of facility characteristics that might affect the completion rate, in addition to analyzing costs. The results of this experiment will help determine whether a particular reminder method is more efficient, both in cost measures and completion rate, and can help inform the survey research field of evolving trends in respondent behavior and reminder mode salience.
Conference Homepage (abstract)