Guidelines for conducting surveys by mobile phone calls in low- and middle-income countries suggest keeping interviews short (<20 minutes). The evidence supporting this recommendation is scant, even though limiting interview duration might reduce the amount of data generated by such surveys. We recruited nearly 2,500 mobile phone users in…

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…

To reduce nonresponse bias in surveys, it has been suggested that researchers allocate additional fieldwork efforts to cases with low estimated response propensity. If these efforts are successful, nonresponse bias may be reduced by changing the variance of response propensities and hence the covariance between response propensities and variables…

We discuss methods that can improve response rates in large-scale cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Regardless of the specific study topic, sample member population, or method of contact, data collections should be designed with certain core principles in mind: legitimizing the study to prospective participants; presenting study…

We describe an experiment to provide a time-limited incentive among a random sample of 594 hard-to-reach respondents, 200 of whom were offered the incentive to complete all survey components of a study during a three-week winter holiday period. Sample members were primary caregivers of children included in the 2014 Child Development Supplement to…

Comparability of data across modes is an important issue in survey research. In this paper we discuss item non-response to attitudinal questions in telephone and web surveys. We present results from a survey experiment conducted in Italy and in Spain that compares different presentations of response options in an online setting with a benchmark…

Growing rates of nonresponse to telephone surveys can contribute to nonresponse error, and interviewers contribute differentially to nonresponse. Why do some telephone interviewers have better response rates than others? This study uncovered a critical behavior of successful telephone interviewers over the course of introductions: responsive…

Surveys often spend substantial money on multiple mailings and telephone calls to ensure high overall response rates and adequate representation of hard-to-reach demographic subgroups. We examine the extent to which an additional mailing and additional sets of telephone calls are effective in attaining these goals across a variety of subgroups in…

Current literature proposes several strategies for improving response rates to student evaluation surveys. Graduate destination surveys pose the difficulty of tracing graduates years later when their contact details may have changed. This article discusses the methodology of one such a survey to maximise response rates. Compiling a sample frame…

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey (HCAHPS) is a standardized survey instrument used by many hospitals for the purpose of measuring patient's perspectives regarding care received during their hospitalization. The survey provides national benchmark information enabling consumers to make comparisons of…

This mixed methods sequential explanatory study utilized the Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire, responses to open-ended questions, and in-depth interviews to identify transformational leadership qualities that were present among principals in Alberta, Canada. The first quantitative phase consisted of a random sample of 135 schools (with…

Purpose: The Medicare Consumer Assessments of Healthcare Providers and Systems (MCAHPS) survey, a primarily English-language mail survey with English and Spanish telephone follow-up, is the primary means of assessing the health care experiences of American seniors. We examine unit (whole survey) and item nonresponse for this survey to explore…

Historically, responses to the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) were required to be collected by self-administered paper or online questionnaire to be eligible for official analysis. CEQ responses collected by telephone were excluded from the final analysis file to minimise the potential for bias due to mode effects: systematic variation in…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to report findings from a national study of primary headteachers in their second headship in England. This investigated their reasons for moving schools, their choice of second school and a comparison of their experiences as heads of the two schools. Design/methodology/approach: The research design involved…

Three pilot studies were conducted to obtain information about sexual assault perpetration from adult men in the United States. Each used the same random digit-dial sampling and recruitment strategy. One pilot was administered by telephone and two via the Web. Response rates in all pilots were low. Although results cannot be generalized beyond the…