Abstract
Young I. Chun and Kenneth W. Robertson
(1995) "The Effects Of Advance Letters And Reminder/Thank
You Letters On Reducing Nonresponse In An Establishment Survey:
An Experimental Study," Proceedings of the Section on
Survey Research Methods, American Statistical Association,
forthcoming.
An increased nonresponse rate is a major problem not only
in household surveys in the U.S. and abroad but also in
establishment surveys (Christianson and Tortora, 1995) and
economic censuses (Ambler and Mesenbourg, 1992). An
increasing nonresponse rate in establishment surveys has been
of primary concern to government bureaus collecting data from
businesses or firms, as a high response rate is considered an
important component of data quality, and the effort to reduce
nonresponse mounts the survey cost. It is important for
survey researchers to reduce as much nonresponse as possible,
because nonresponse affects the reliability of statistical
estimates by introducing bias.
This paper reports the findings from a recent field
experiment conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
that was designed to evaluate a set of nonresponse-reducing
techniques for an establishment mail survey. The nonresponse
reducers investigated are advance letters and reminder/thank
you letters. Among various design techniques (e.g.,
personalization, stamped return envelope, first outgoing
postage, sponsorship, financial incentives, questionnaire
color, and etc.), the combined use of advance and
reminder/thank you letters have been found most effective in
reducing nonresponse rates for voluntary household surveys
and censuses (Dillman et al., 1993), but have not been tested
yet for establishment surveys.
Last Modified Date: July 19, 2008
|
