Surveying the General Public Over the Internet Using Addressed-Based Sampling

Abstract We report results from two statewide experiments in Wash-ington designed to test potential methods for using postal mail to obtain survey responses over the Internet from address-based samples of gen-eral public households. The five methods we test are: 1) sending Web and mail modes of response sequentially; 2) providing a prepaid $5 in-centive; 3) offering an instruction card for responding over the Web; 4) sending the follow-up request by Priority Mail; and 5) providing an ad-ditional $5 incentive with this follow-up request. Results are evaluated from the standpoint of response rates, demographic representativeness of respondents, and survey costs and data collection times for Web and mail modes. We find that a ‘‘Web-plus-mail’ ’ design—mailing an initial Web request followed by a mail request—with the prepaid incentive offers much potential for obtaining Internet responses. In addition, the mail follow-up to the initial Web request significantly increases overall response rates and improves respondent representativeness