Understanding and Calculating Response Rates for Surveys and Interviews (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hello researchers, it's Dr. G. Hey I'm pulling together just a quick little video for you to understand how to calculate response rates, particularly for surveys, interviews, etc. or telephone interviews. So let's just, this is going to be quick I promise, we'll keep this short. So first of all, how do you go about calculating a response rate? I want to go through what each of the components are. So the formula is response rate equals completed, number of completed instruments with responding units, and the number of eligible responding units in the sample. So RR equals CI divided by E. So what does this mean? The response rate for calculating a web-based mail survey is, the response rate is equal to the number of usable questionnaires returned divided by the number of contacts attempted subtracted by the number of bad addresses. So I know it's a lot, it's a lot of acronyms there, this is why I'm giving this to you so you could have it in black and white here. So you conduct a web survey, you try to contact 1,000 people. So the thousand sample elements have been classified as followed. So the usable questionnaires returned, UQR, is 250. So you get 250 of fully completed or return surveys you can deal with in your, in your analysis. And then we have the number of contacts attempted is a thousand. So the number of bad addresses is 50. So now I want you to take a moment to calculate based on the formula what that response rate will be. Alright so let's say we're talking about a telephone survey. So telephone surveys are a little bit different in there. We included not at home. So the response rate calculation for a telephone surveys has no eligibility requirement is the response rate is equal to the number of completed interviews. So you've been on the phone, you talked them through, they went through the whole thing and you divide that by the number of completed interviews plus the number of refusals plus the number at home. So that's how you calculate this. So with telephone surveys the response rate calculation with eligibility requirement is you're adding the percentage of eligibility before the number of refusals plus the not at home. So IE is a number of ineligible interviewees. So you might want to have that number handy for when you're discussing your telephone survey if you do one. Alright so for example the first eligibility percentage may be calculated as E. Remember is the number of ineligible interviewees is equal to CI, number of completed interviews, plus IE, the number of ineligible interviews, is equal to 250 divided by 250 plus 50 equals 83 percent. Alright so now you can calculate the response rate using the formula. So keeping track of you know refusals, not at home, people hang up on you, that's going to have you better understand your response rate calculation. So overall the quality of the data is really important and the number of responses you get might be due to all of that promotion you do. Is it clear what you're asking of them? Do you tell them how long it will take? Have you provided a little kick incentive for them to do this? It also provides insight into the likely influence of non-response error on the project. So you should really strive to get the highest response rates possible. So a typical response rate might look like this. So there's different estimates depending on different companies or organizations. Remember that sometimes you know a consumer survey might be a little bit easier to get information from than maybe a medical or some other type of survey. So the industries do differ. The rates generally are between 20 and 30 percent response rate. A rate below 10 percent is very very low. So how do you get more surveys, more responses? The length of the survey, remember I said 10 to 12 questions, simple, guarantee that your confidentiality or anonymity, that's going to be a statement you put in your recruitment, which we'll talk about next time. Interview characteristics and training, maybe it's a certain population or that or maybe you have an interviewer who just isn't up to snuff. Personalization, the more you personalize it, it might get you a better rate. Response incentives, if you put a little kickback in there, a little sweepstakes, you might get some more. And then follow-up surveys, always best. So I want you to think about what strategies you will create to try to boost that response rate goal. All right, questions or concerns, comments, give me a holler at email in Canvas. If you're interested in learning about more topics, sign up for my YouTube channel. Thanks and have a great day.