Chapter Nine. Survey Research
SELF-ADMINISTERED QUESTIONNAIRES
Mail Distribution and Return
Monitoring Returns
Follow-up Mailings
Acceptable Response Rates
A Case Study
There are several ways of administering a survey, and the first one we'll examine is the self-administered questionnaire. As the name suggests, respondents are given questionnaires and asked to complete them on their own.
Sometimes questionnaires are handed out in a group setting, often they are sent through the mails. Less often, they are delivered to respondents by researchers.
In this section, we'll examine a number of logisitcal
concerns that go into a successful survey. We'll look at some ways
of increasing the response rate--the percentage who return the questionnaires--and
we'll consider some guidelines to what constitutes a successful or unsuccessful
return.