Shannon Amberg
Assistant Professor, Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Purdue University
- West Lafayette
- United States
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Re: Response Rate for a Mail Survey as part of Barrier and Benefit Research
2009-05-05 11:11:53 UTC
Hi Marianne,
I agree with Ingo's comment above and would like to emphasize that you need to be focusing on how to get a representative sample for you survey. Most people, when doing surveys such as this, like to work with a sample of completed surveys that number anywhere between 500-1000 for regional projects. That should provide you with enough statistical power to see any relationships going on. However, the validity of the results really depends on how representative your sample is. Are the people who didn't respond systematically different in some way than those who did respond? Does your sample reflect the census trends for the region you've sent the survey out in? It's hard to estimate these things prior to getting results back, so I can understand your concern about how many surveys to send out.
What I like to do for general surveys is plan on a 20-30% response rate (this is what is typical in the U.S.) and, based on my need for having for example 500 returned surveys, calculate how many initial surveys I would need to send out to achieve this goal considering the anticipated response rate. In terms of the appropriate number of returned surveys for your population, that depends on the size of the population that you're focusing on, but it usually does not require more than 1000 if the sample is truly representative.
Check out the Dillman and Salant method for conducting mail surveys as well. They provide helpful insights into how to conduct the multi-wave procedure for mail surveys, how to calculate the sample size you need, and how to increase your response rate.
Hope this helps!
Shannon
Shannon Amberg
Assistant Professor, Human Dimensions of Natural Resources
Purdue University
United States
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