Recruiting Web Surveys via Postal-Mail: Best-Practice, Experiments, and Innovation |
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| Coordinator 1 | Dr Jean Philippe Décieux (University of Bonn & Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB)) |
| Coordinator 2 | Dr Carina Cornesse (GESIS) |
Since e-mail addresses are usually unavailable on standard sampling frames of broader population surveys (e.g., population registers), recruiting high-quality web surveys is challenging. When conducting such large-scale and large-scope web surveys, recruitment and surveying is, therefore, typically conducted in two separate steps: First, a (probability-)sample of the study population is drawn and contacted offline, often during a brief face-to-face or telephone recruitment-interview. Second, members of the sample are asked to switch to the online mode for the actual survey.
Compared to interviewer-administered contact and recruitment, postal-mail strategies are becoming increasingly popular and a large number of cross-sectional as well as longitudinal web survey projects are currently being initiated using postal-mail recruitment in combination with online survey methodology. There are several reasons for this. For example, recruiting web surveys via postal-mail is usually both more time- and cost-efficient than the available alternatives. In addition, this strategy avoids undesirable interviewer effects and allows respondents to read through study and recruitment material at their own speed, time, and convenience.
Currently, the methodology for successful postal-mail recruitment of web surveys is advancing fast. Therefore, this session aims to provide a broad exchange forum for researchers and projects working on and with postal-recruited web surveys. In addition to sharing experiences and best-practices, we are particularly interested in experimental approaches that might include, topics such as:
• Strategies for enabling the transition from offline contact to web data collection mode
• Comparing the success of postal-mail recruitment to other web survey recruitment strategies
• Optimizing initial response, panel consent, and panel registration for postal-mail recruited longitudinal studies
• Push-to-web and other mixed-mode recruitment approaches
• Cost-benefit analyses of different incentive and reminder strategies
• Design and layout