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- Title
ARE "BULK-RATE OCCUPANTS" REALLY UNRESPONSIVE?
- Authors
Kernan, Jerome B.
- Abstract
The article examines the effectiveness of the postage and address variables in affecting mail questionnaire return rates. The mail questionnaire is a widely used and fairly thoroughly researched method of obtaining data from respondents. Essentially three concerns seem to occupy investigators: whether and how responses are biased; how mail questionnaires compare with telephone or in-person interviewing; and how response rates can be increased. The response rate achieved with a mail questionnaire needs to be considered in relative context. A common, and largely unsupported, assumption about mail questionnaires is that their response rate is higher when first-class postage is used rather than bulk-rate mailing. Additionally, a personal addressing of the envelope is generally thought to occasion a higher return than when simply Occupant is used. If these two assumptions are correct, the first-class and personal mailings are managerially counseled only if their return rates are sufficiently higher than those of bulk-rate or occupant mailings to compensate for the additional costs involved. While a personalized/first-class combination yielded the largest return rate among treatments, its superiority over the others is both slight and statistically insignificant. Moreover, personalized addressing (postage varied) yields a response rate effectively equal to occupant addressing (postage varied), and first-class postage yields a rate only insignificantly higher than bulk-rate postage.
- Subjects
RESPONSE rates; SURVEYS; MAIL surveys; QUESTIONNAIRES; POSTAL rates
- Publication
Public Opinion Quarterly, 1971, Vol 35, Issue 3, p420
- ISSN
0033-362X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1086/267929