This paper, 1) outlines some of the challenges in obtaining participation from older sample members in a survey that is not specifically tailored to older people, 2) provides evidence of the relative response propensity of older people in such a survey and, 3) provides experimental evidence of...

This paper describes the extent and correlates of non-response at waves 1 and 2 of Understanding Society. We examine both household-level and individual-level non-response at wave 1. For wave 2, we examine attrition relative to wave 1 both in terms of enumerated persons and in terms of adults...

This paper examines the role of interviewers' experience, attitudes, personality traits and inter-personal skills in determining survey co-operation. We take the perspective that these characteristics influence interviewers‟ behaviour and hence influence the doorstep interaction between...

Previous evidence suggests that a wave with mixed mode data collection in an otherwise face-to-face panel survey will achieve a lower response rate than other waves. But until now there has been no evidence as to whether the response rate can be expected to recover subsequently. In other words,...

We compare two alternative mixed mode survey designs with face-to-face data collection in terms of differences in estimates. Both mixed mode designs involve face-to-face, telephone and web interviewing. One design uses modes sequentially; the other offers respondents an explicit choice of mode....

Respondents in long telephone survey interviews may adopt satisficing strategies as they approach the end of the questionnaire (Holbrook, Green and Krosnick, 2003). However, there is inconsistency regarding the relationship between questionnaire length and different forms of satisficing. We...

Researchers often assume that respondent burden influences survey participation propensity and that interview length is a good indicator of burden. However, there is little evidence of the effect of interview length on subsequent participation propensity, particularly for face-to-face surveys....

In order to lower costs, the idea has been raised to use a mixed-mode design for the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) using Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) and Web Self-Interviewing (WSI). However, a mixed-mode CAPI-WSI design may damage data-quality because of measurement...

Targeted response inducement strategies involve varying features of survey design between sample subgroups in a way that is anticipated to achieve the best trade-off between costs and non-response. The features could include prenotification letters, incentives, between-wave mailings, website...

We conduct two large-scale randomised experiments on the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to study methods of reducing panel attrition. The first experiment compares different strategies for tracing and maintaining contact with sample members. We find that change-of-address cards...