Expected yield rates are essential to a survey's data collection plan, as they inform requisite sample sizes to meet the survey's objectives. Given an overall expected yield rate for a self-administered mail survey, this short take describes a simple method for using the Census Planning Database to assign differential yield rates to lower-level…

Even small monetary incentives, e.g., a one-dollar bill in a postal invitation letter, can increase the response rate in a web survey. However, in the euro currency area, the smallest amount of monetary incentive for a postal invitation is a five-euro bill, which is costly. As such, we conducted a random experiment with prepaid stamp and postcard…

This article presents the results of a general population study that used three different modes of data collection administered sequentially. The study began with a letter that contained the link to an online survey. Those who did not respond were interviewed by phone or face-to-face. The article focuses on the cost of the study related to…

Telephone surveys face more and more criticism because of decreasing coverage and increasing costs, and the risk of producing socially desirable answers. Consequently, survey administrators consider switching their surveys to the web mode, although the web mode is more susceptible to item nonresponse. Still, we do not know whether this is true for…

Over the past few decades, the survey industry has experienced a steady decline in response rates, which has posed numerous challenges for researchers, most notably concerns about nonresponse bias. We present results from three studies conducted in an attempt to increase response rates and reduce nonresponse bias for a U.S. national household…

Short message service (SMS or text messaging) surveys can collect data quickly and inexpensively. However, SMS surveys have space constraints that pose difficulties to questionnaire designers: Questions can only be 160 characters or less, surveys must be short, and many respondents use phones with small screens. In this article, we compare SMS and…