Hello Sue,

I don't know whether this will help you or not, but somewhere, about 2 years ago, I read that using enticements such as raffle prospects or payment actually result in a poorer response rate than if people respond "out of the goodness of their hearts". I have certainly seen research in which a quite nice set of raffle prizes (five $150 gift vouchers) were offered to prospective participants, and the response rate was miserable - down around 14%.

I think that nothing beats a well-designed survey that exhibits polished use of language throughout it. Colleagues and I have tried to create good surveys, and online we have had high response and retention rates - up between 70 and 80%.

All the best with your research!

Hi Robert, thank you very much for your reply! Yes, I've read some papers saying incentives don't always positively correlate with the high response rate.

I'm not offering any cash prize but actually a small item that is very relevant to our profession. It is just little something that might motivate my fellow students to actually participate in the study rather than just sending an email to encourage their participation.

I actually got this idea from my friend who studies with me as I carried the item with me one day and she mentioned how she would also love to have it haha. I'll definitely review my questionnaire again before submission to make sure the quality and readability of it, but it has already gone through the pilot study and proven to be well understood among peers. Just hope this little something could cheer my peers up during this difficult time and make it a little more fun. Was just a bit stuck in terms of how to separate anonymous aspect of survey vs. potential identifiers for those who want to enter!

Best,

Sue

Hello again, Sue,

Your account is interesting, and I appreciate where you're coming from.

By mere chance, your response has just come in at the same time as the following invitation to participate in a survey that had a quite nice prospect of a reward:

https://tbicommunications.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d0XYWwlPrW2qM7P?SOURCE=Kudos

I began responding to that survey (out of the goodness of my heart!), not being interested in the reward and knowing my chances of "winning" were slim. But I quickly discontinued responding when I wanted a "Not applicable" response option to some items and it wasn't available. In my view, the survey was poorly designed. So, I'd go back to one of the points I was making in my initial post: A good response, or retention, rate is more likely if a survey is well designed.

For what it's worth, I almost always recommend with my colleagues that we provide "I have no idea" and "Not applicable" response options, or whatever else is appropriate for the scale we're using. Those options are seldom used (so they don't result in problems with missing data), but I think they create and maintain rapport with respondents.