Demographic differences in response to mixed-mode surveys

Music City Center 

Mixed-mode surveys, specifically those using mail contacts to offer web and paper response modes, have been increasing in popularity since the early 2000s. As internet access and usage have become more ubiquitous, researchers question whether and when to offer sampled cases a paper questionnaire and whether that answer differs by demographic subgroup. This paper leverages a five-treatment response mode experiment (paper-only, web-only, sequential web-paper, choice, and choice-plus [choice with a promised incentive for responding by web]) that was conducted within a new federally-sponsored, nationally-representative survey. This analysis will focus on whether response rates and the percentage of web response for each treatment varied by demographic subgroups such as age, educational attainment, and household income. These subgroups are related to a person's expected comfort with the internet, which is hypothesized to influence their willingness to respond to surveys by web. This research contributes to the field's understanding of who is likely to respond to a survey under a given response mode treatment.

Mixed-mode surveys

response mode

mode preference

incentive