The effect of researcher status on mail survey response rates. Marketing Bulletin,1

This study examined the effect of researcher status on the response rate to a university sponsored survey of a random sample of 250 New Zealand businesses obtained from the Department of Statistics. All businesses were sent identical material, which identified Massey University as the sponsor of the research, except for the status of the researcher. For Group A, the researcher was identified as an honours student; for Group B, the researcher was identified as a research officer. For each mailout, a higher response rate was obtained from respondents who received a letter from a Research Officer than from respondents who received a letter from an Honours Student. However, the differences in response rates were not statistically significant