Household Early Bird Incentives: Leveraging Family Influence to Improve Household Response Rates

• Activity Number: 185
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, July 30, 2012 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Felicia LeClere*+ and Shelly Plummer and Jennifer Vanicek and Amaya Ashley and Kari Carris
• Companies: NORC and NORC and NORC and NORC and NORC
• Keywords: Incentives ; REACH U.S. ; leverage-saliency ; participation ; address-based sampling ; declining response rates

Abstract

The effects of incentives on survey participation have been found in previous research to be dependent on both the survey context and respondent characteristics. In this study, we report the results of an experiment in which we expand the source of leverage to include other members of the household to assess whether adding incentives for completion by all eligible members of a sampled household has a substantial and differential effect on survey participation. The experiment was conducted among six communities that participate in the Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health Across the U.S. (REACH U.S.) Risk Factor Survey (RFS). Addresses were randomly assigned to one of the following groups prior to data collection: (1) control with no incentive, (2) a group that receives a $5 prepaid incentive, or (3) a group that receives the $5 prepaid incentive with a promised $20 payment if all eligible members of the household respond within 7 days of initial contact. We examine key survey performance rates including the interview completion rate to assess whether the household level incentive has any additional impact on the willingness to complete a survey.