The joint and comparative effects of the use of monetary incentives and follow-up mailings were examined in a mail survey of suburban Washington, DC cable television subscribers. Four experimental groups received monetary incentives enclosed with the first mailing only ($0.25, $0.50, $1.00, or $2.00) and three follow-up mailings. These groups were compared with each other and against a control group that did not receive an incentive. The results indicated that the response rate from the first mailing increased significantly as the incentive amount increased from zero to $0.25, and from $0.25 to $1.00. Four mailings without an incentive produced a higher response rate than a single mailing with an incentive, but a combination of follow-up mailings and a $1.00 or $2.00 incentive produced a significantly higher response rate than an equivalent number of mailings without an incentive.There was some evidence of intertreatment response bias. Larger monetary incentives tended to produce: (1) a greater degree of effort expended in completing the questionnaires, as measured by the number of short answers and comments provided, and the number of words written, and (2) comments that were more favorable toward the survey sponsor.
JEANNINE JAMES is President of
A problem of particular interest in pre‐election polls is to predict the likelihood that a sampled individual, whether respondent or non‐respondent, will vote. This can be especially difficult in state and local elections since voter turnout is low compared to national elections. We study this problem by means of validated pre‐election polls of registered voters in a US city which were conducted for the 1988 Presidential and 1989 Virginia State Gubernatorial elections. Results indicate that respondents and 'refusals' are significantly more likely to vote than non‐respondents who cannot be contacted, and that a respondent's self‐described likelihood to vote is the best indicator that he will. A logit model is used to predict the likelihood that a registered voter will vote in the State election based on voting status in the Presidential election, age and sex. The presence of the variable sex in the model is explained by the high profile of the abortion issue in the campaign.
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