IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/evarev/v24y2000i4p347-363.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects of Incentive Size and Timing on Response Rates to a Follow-Up Wave of a Longitudinal Mailed Survey

Author

Listed:
  • Rebecca L. Collins

    (RAND, Santa Monica, CA)

  • Phyllis L. Ellickson

    (RAND, Santa Monica, CA)

  • Ron D. Hays

    (RAND and University of California, Los Angeles)

  • Daniel F. Mccaffrey

    (RAND, Santa Monica, CA)

Abstract

Young adults who had previously participated in a longitudinal survey of youth were sent a questionnaire. They were randomly assigned to receive a $20 prepayment, a $20 postpayment, or a $25 postpayment for participation in the latest survey. Those in the large incentive condition were 7 percentage points more likely to return a survey than those in the smaller, postpayment group. Prepayment had a smaller, less reliable effect. Effects of incentive magnitude and timing were consistent at each month of the study period; only better high school grades distinguished early responders from late responders. Nonresponders had characteristics suggestive of low social conformity and were more likely than responders to be African American and male and have low SES. The discussion centers on motivations for participating in research and differences in the incentives likely to promote continued response versus initial study enrollment.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebecca L. Collins & Phyllis L. Ellickson & Ron D. Hays & Daniel F. Mccaffrey, 2000. "Effects of Incentive Size and Timing on Response Rates to a Follow-Up Wave of a Longitudinal Mailed Survey," Evaluation Review, , vol. 24(4), pages 347-363, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:evarev:v:24:y:2000:i:4:p:347-363
    DOI: 10.1177/0193841X0002400401
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0193841X0002400401
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0193841X0002400401?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Armstrong, J. Scott, 1975. "Monetary incentives in mail surveys," MPRA Paper 81695, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Palmer, Adrian & Koenig-Lewis, Nicole & Medi Jones, Lisa Elinor, 2013. "The effects of residents' social identity and involvement on their advocacy of incoming tourism," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 142-151.
    2. Palmer, Adrian & Mathel, Virginie, 2010. "Causes and consequences of underutilised capacity in a tourist resort development," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 925-935.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. J Saunders & D Jobber & V Mitchell, 2006. "The optimum prepaid monetary incentives for mail surveys," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 57(10), pages 1224-1230, October.
    2. Arvydas Jadevicius & Brian Sloan & Andrew Brown, 2013. "Property Market Modelling and Forecasting: A Case for Simplicity," ERES eres2013_10, European Real Estate Society (ERES).
    3. Collin Weigel & Laura A. Paul & Paul J. Ferraro & Kent D. Messer, 2021. "Challenges in Recruiting U.S. Farmers for Policy‐Relevant Economic Field Experiments," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(2), pages 556-572, June.
    4. Michael W. Robbins & Geoffrey Grimm & Brian Stecher & V. Darleen Opfer, 2018. "A Comparison of Strategies for Recruiting Teachers Into Survey Panels," SAGE Open, , vol. 8(3), pages 21582440187, August.
    5. Armstrong, J. Scott & Yokum, J. Thomas, 1994. "Effectiveness of Monetary Incentives: Mail Surveys to Members of Multinational Professional Groups," MPRA Paper 81691, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Uri Gneezy & Pedro Rey-Biel, "undated". "On the Relative Efficiency of Performance Pay and Social Incentives," Working Papers 585, Barcelona School of Economics.
    7. Michael Bowling, J. & Rimer, Barbara K. & Lyons, Elizabeth J. & Golin, Carol E. & Frydman, Gilles & Ribisl, Kurt M., 2006. "Methodologic challenges of e-health research," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 390-396, November.
    8. Jobber, David & Saunders, John & Mitchell, Vince-Wayne, 2004. "Prepaid monetary incentive effects on mail survey response," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 57(4), pages 347-350, April.
    9. Allyson L. Holbrook & Isabel C. Farrar & Susan J. Popkin, 2006. "Surveying a Chicago Public Housing Development," Evaluation Review, , vol. 30(6), pages 779-802, December.
    10. JS Armstrong, 2005. "Review of Don A. Dillman's Mail and Telephone Surveys, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978," General Economics and Teaching 0502043, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Aleksandra Gajic & David Cameron & Jeremiah Hurley, 2012. "The cost-effectiveness of cash versus lottery incentives for a web-based, stated-preference community survey," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 13(6), pages 789-799, December.
    12. Jobber, David & Saunders, John & Mitchell, Vince-Wayne, 2004. "Prepaid monetary incentive effects on mail survey response," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 21-25, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:evarev:v:24:y:2000:i:4:p:347-363. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.