Two hundred fourteen manipulations of the independent variables in 98 mailed questionnaire response rate experiments were treated as respondents to a survey, yielding a mean final response rate of 60.6% with slightly over two contacts. The number of contacts and th judged salience to the respondent were found to explain 51% of the variance in final response. Government organization sponsorship, the type of population, the length of the questionnaire, questions concerning other individuals, the use of special class of mail of telephone on the third contact, and the use of metered or franked mail on the outer envelope affected final response independent of contacts and salience. A causal model of the final response rate including initial response, explaining 90% of the variance, and a regression equation predicting final response rates are presented to show that high response rates are achievable by manipulating the costs of responding and the perceived importance of both the research and the individual response.
Samenvatting