JSM 2004 - Toronto

Abstract #302259

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Activity Number: 41
Type: Topic Contributed
Date/Time: Sunday, August 8, 2004 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
Abstract - #302259
Title: Two Advance-letter Experiments to Raise Response Rates
Author(s): Charles D. Shuttles*+ and Paul J. Lavrakas and Jennie Lai
Companies: Nielsen Media Research and Nielsen Media Research and Nielsen Media Research
Address: 501 Brooker Creek Blvd., Oldsmar, FL, 34677,
Keywords:
Abstract:

This paper will present the results of two experimental studies on the use of sending advance letters to mailable RDD households prior to contacting them via telephone. The first test was conducted in August 2003. It tested several different conditions (n = 1,000 in each condition) comparing various amount of cash sent along with an advance letter vs. an advance post card. The advance letter by itself did not raise telephone response rates. However, $1 raised them two percentage points compared to $3 and $5 raising them approx. 10 percentage points. The second experiment will be conducted in February 2004 and will test for the main effects of sending three-levels of cash in an advance letter and sending a promotional flyer, and the interaction of those two factors; each randomly assigned condition will have 10,000 RDD numbers assigned to it. The second experiment will investigate the impact of the treatments on response rates to the RDD telephone survey and tin a subsequent mail survey stage that follows up the RDD survey stage.

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