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zur HomepageAUTHORS: Kai Arzheimer / Markus Klein
TITEL: The effect of material incentives on return rate, panel attrition and sample composition of a mail panel survey
SOURCE: International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Volume 11, Issue 4, pp. 368-377
ABSTRACT: A lot of research has been conducted on the use of material incentives in cross-sectional mail surveys, but not much is known about their effectiveness in mail panel surveys. In this paper we examine the effects of material incentives (phonecards) on the return rate, panel attrition and sample composition of a two-wave mail panel which was administered adhering to the Total Design Method. Our experiment shows that an appropriate incentive given ex ante increases not only the return rate of mail surveys (which has been demonstrated before) but also the speed of return and the reinterview rate of a mail panel survey. Our experiment shows that an appropriate incentive given ex ante in both panel waves increases the return rate, the speed of return and the reinterview rate of a mail panel survey. Sampling bias regarding gender, age, socio-economic context and interest in the topic of the study is neither increased nor decreased by the use of an monetary incentive, and we can demonstrate that the respective effects of incentives employed in two panel waves are completely independent of each other. Therefore, our data do not support the conjecture that the extensive use of incentives may destroy the intrinsic motivation of respondents.
