The Effects of Interactive Requests on the Quantity and Quality of Survey Responses: An International Methodological Experiment

A perennial issue of survey research is that some participants do not answer all questions. Interactive follow-up requests are a novel approach to this problem. However, research on their effectiveness is scarce. I present the most comprehensive study yet on the effects of interactive requests on item non-responses. Theoretically, I outline different pathways whereby follow-up requests may effectively increase response rates and improve data quality: reminding, motivating, instructing, monitoring, and sanctioning. To test my hypothesis that interactive requests increase item response rates, I conducted an online survey experiment in 2021 on diverse samples of around 3,100 respondents in ten countries worldwide. I find that follow-up requests generally increase response rates, although effects vary by country. Depending on the question and survey design, interactive requests reduce item non-responses by up to 47 per cent across countries, while not adversely affecting data quality. I thus recommend response requests to increase survey data efficiency.