The research on response facilitation factors in mail surveys is reviewed, and background is developed to enable the comparison of results obtained by two analytic approaches, a descriptive analysis and a meta-analysis, using the same set of studies. Specific criteria for sample and methodology were applied to studies extracted from four CD-ROM databases using search terms for mail survey combined with response rate. Multiple publications of the same study were deleted. The final listing of articles to be used in the reviews contained a total of 208 publications. After final agreement was reached on the studies that were to be included, the two reviews were conducted independently. A list of the 208 sources of studies is included. (Contains 11 references.) (SLD)