Public Opinion Quarterly Advance Access originally published online on August 21, 2008
Public Opinion Quarterly 2008 72(3):459-469; doi:10.1093/poq/nfn026
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An Evaluation of Respondent Selection Methods for Household Mail Surveys
Address correspondence to Michael P. Battaglia; e-mail: mike_battaglia{at}abtassoc.com.
Mail surveys are a staple of the survey industry; however, they are rarely used in surveys of the general population. The problem is twofold: (1) lack of a complete sampling frame of households and (2) difficulties with ensuring random selection of a respondent within the household. However, advances in electronic record keeping, such as the U.S. Postal Service Delivery Sequence File, now make it possible to sample from a frame of residential addresses. Unfortunately, less is known about the effectiveness of within-household selection techniques for household mail surveys. A six-state pilot study was conducted as part of the 2005 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System using the Delivery Sequence File to sample addresses for a mail survey. The pilot study tested three respondent selection methods: any adult, adult with the next birthday, and all adults. The next-birthday and all-adults methods yielded household-level response rates that were comparable to the any-adult method, the method assumed to have the least respondent burden. At the respondent level, however, the response rate for the all-adults method was lower when we accounted for within-household nonresponse.
MICHAEL P. BATTAGLIA is with Abt Associates Inc., 55 Wheeler Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. MICHAEL W. LINK is with Nielsen Media Research, 3784 Ardsley Ct., Marietta, GA 30062, USA. MARTIN R. FRANKEL is with Baruch College, City University of New York, 14 Patricia Lane, Cos Cob, CT 06807, USA. LARRY OSBORN is with Abt Associates Inc., 640 North LaSalle, Chicago, IL 60610, USA. ALI H. MOKDAD is with the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mail Stop K66, Atlanta, GA 30341, USA. The authors are grateful for comments from three anonymous reviewers. The findings and conclusions in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Abt Associates Inc., Nielsen Media Research, or Baruch College.