Can We Drive Respondents to the Web? Experiemntal Tests of Multi-Mode Survey Implementation and Varied Survey Benefit Appeals

• Activity Number: 159
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 1, 2011 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Danna Moore*+
• Companies: Washington State University
• Keywords: mult-mode surveys ; experiments survey design ; benefit appeals ; agriculture

Abstract

Two primary objectives of this research are:1)to evaluate if respondents can be motivated to complete the survey in any mode (web, mail, telephone), and 2) can we further motivate completion by the lowest cost strategy-the web questionnaire. An experimental frame work was used to evaluate the role and effectiveness of mixed mode survey implementation in combination with other survey strategies that can impact response. While web based surveys have become increasingly more common in usage and in research, this methodology has not been thoroughly investigated for agricultural populations and for USDA sponsored surveys. The other strategies included variation of benefit appeals used in letters, length of questionnaire, and visual design of question presentation screens on the web. This study also demonstrates the constraint of keeping question presentation similar across modes and evaluates the visual design consideration of one question per web screen versus multi questions per web screen on respondent completion and item non-response. Experiments were carried out on an initial sample of 13,000 and were evaluated through multivariate analysis of sample variables.