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There is an erroneously held view that postal surveys cannot achieve sufficient response rates to overcome non‐response bias and are best suited when budgets are limited. This article reviews the increasing number of published studies which show that, with planning, high response rates can be achieved. It reports on a survey of members of the Postal Research Special Interest Group (formed under the auspices of the Market Research Society). Current postal research practice is highlighted and inferences drawn about the mechanics associated with high response rates.

Extended research efforts have been dedicated to understanding how different aspects of online surveys impact the response rate and quality of collected data. With the hope to yield higher response rates, leading survey software solutions (e.g., SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, QuestionPro) introduced a new technique of embedding a question from an online survey into invitation emails sent to the respondents. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the impact of embedded questions on survey response rate and quality. The results of two experimental studies show that respondents are more likely to respond to a survey with an embedded question compared to an email without one. No statistically significant differences were discovered regarding data quality that was assessed via survey completion rate, respondent bias, and attention check questions. The chapter provides suggestions and guidelines for increasing online surveys' response rate and quality.

Purpose — The paper is analysing the effect of adding a web survey to a traditional telephone-based national travel survey by asking the respondents to check in on the web and answer the questions there (Computer Assisted Web Interview, CAWI). If they are not participating by web they are as usual called by telephone (Computer Assisted Telephone Interview, CATI).

Design/methodology/approach — Multivariate regression analyses are used to analyse the difference in response rates by the two media and to analyse if respondents' answering by the two media have different travel patterns.

Findings — The analyses show that web interviews are saving money, even though a more intensive post-processing is necessary. The analyses seem to show that the CAWI is resulting in a more careful answering which results in more trips reported. A CAWI is increasing the participation of children in the survey and of highly educated. And it is offering a higher flexibility to answer after a couple of days off. The CATI is on the other hand more useful for the elderly. In addition, the CATI survey proved to be more useful for busy people and people not willing to participate in a survey at all. Young people and people with low resources who are difficult to reach by telephone are neither met on the web. Most of the differences in the response shares can be compensated by a weighting procedure. However, not all seems to be possible to compensate for. An effort to increase the number participating in the CAWI survey might increase the quality of the survey in general.

Originality/value of paper — In many countries authorities are considering how to reduce the cost of their national travel surveys. The value of the paper is to show that a combination of a CAWI and a CATI could be a good solution. Furthermore, it shows that the mixed mode could improve a CATI and therefore be the reason in itself to change methodology.

The paper's aim is to illustrate the use of a technique that can help researchers choose which techniques, and at what level, to employ in an internet‐based survey.

A screening experiment, designed as a Plackett‐Burman design, is used to study main effects of 11 techniques for increasing survey response. Three measures of effect used are click rate, completion rate, and response rate. A convenience sample of students at a large university in New Zealand is used.

Follow‐up had significant impact on click rate; incentive and pre‐notification had a significant impact on completion rate; no technique had significant effect on response rate.

Main effects are examined. Also, a limited number of approaches for each technique are studied.

This paper illustrates the use of a methodology that researchers, practitioner, and academics alike, can use to select techniques to employ in an internet survey. This is the first known application of the technique for selecting data collection techniques in marketing.

While mail surveys continue to be a widely used research technique, relatively little empirical research exists that assesses their effectiveness among industrial (commercial) organizations. To address this literature void, the present paper reports the findings from a mail survey of international freight forwarders. More specifically, this paper investigates the influence of postcard prenotification with respect to response rates, response speed, response quality, response bias, and response cost effectiveness. The paper also discusses implications of the results and offers suggestions for further research.

In addition to proposing an integrated conceptualization of mail survey response behavior, this article presents an empirical study which examines the potential of source and appeal variations on response rate, response speed, and response completeness. The findings of this empirical study are presented and compared to a similar study for the purpose of validating source and appeal effects on mail survey response and the conceptual framework. The results, not totally in agreement with earlier findings, generally lend support for the untapped potential of source and appeal in influencing mail survey response behavior. There is also statistical justification for two of the six motivators comprising the proposed conceptual framework.

The degree of interest in the subject of a survey has no effect on response rates from samples of the general public, and short questionnaires yield substantially higher response rates than lengthier ones. Two questionnaires of identical length but covering two different topics were used in a survey of 240 people drawn at random from a Montreal telephone directory; the results concluded that an offer of survey results to participants does not affect response rate significantly, but persistence alone represents the crucial factor in securing good returns.

Highlights the importance of ensuring the highest possible return rates when using mail surveys. Describes a study investigating the difference in return rates between a parent company and a fictitious consulting firm. Reports that there was no difference between response rates for two different return addresses, and that response bias was not a problem. Concludes therefore that great cost savings can be made as a result of developing and mailing the materials in‐house. Summarizes research literature on response rate surveys.

We survey banks to construct national estimates of total noncash payments by type, payments fraud and related information. The survey is designed to create aggregate total estimates of all payments in the United States using data from responses returned by a representative, random sample. In 2016, the number of questions in the survey doubled compared with the previous survey, raising serious concerns of smaller bank nonparticipation. To obtain sufficient response data for all questions from smaller banks, we administered a modified survey design which, in addition to randomly sampling banks, also randomly assigned one of several survey forms, subsets of the full survey. This case study illustrates that while several other factors influenced response outcomes, the approach helped ensure sufficient response for smaller banks. Using such an approach may be especially important in an optional-participation survey, when reducing costs to respondents may affect success, or when imputation of unplanned missing items is already needed for estimation. While a variety of factors affected the outcome, we find that the planned missing data approach improved response outcomes for smaller banks. The planned missing item design should be considered as a way of reducing survey burden or increasing unit-level and item-level responses for individual respondents without reducing the full set of survey items collected.

Patient satisfaction is paramount to maintaining high clinical quality assurance. This study seeks to compare response rates, response bias, and the completeness of data between paper and electronic collection modes of a chiropractic patient satisfaction survey.

A convenience sample of 206 patients presenting to a chiropractic college clinic were surveyed concerning satisfaction with their chiropractic care. Paper (in‐clinic and postal) and electronic modes of survey administration were compared for response rates and non‐response bias.

The online data collection mode resulted in fewer non‐responses and a higher response rate, and did not evince response bias when compared to paper modes. The postal paper mode predicted non‐response rates over the in‐clinic paper and online modalities and exhibited a gender bias.

This current study was a single clinic study; future studies should consider multi‐clinic data collections. Busy clinic operations and available staff resources restricted the ability to conduct a random sampling of patients or to invite all eligible patients, therefore limiting the generalizability of collected survey data.

Results of this study will provide data to aid development of survey protocols that efficiently, account for available human resources, and are convenient for patients while allowing for the most complete and accurate data collection possible in an educational clinic setting.

Understanding patient responses across survey modes is critical for the cultivation of quality business intelligence within college teaching clinic settings. This study bridges measurement evidence from three popular data collection modalities and offers support for higher levels of quality for web‐based data collection.