Archive for November 20th, 2009

Dealing With Extremely Long Response Lists in a Mixed-Mode Survey Environment

Abstract:

In some surveys, respondents are confronted with selecting a response from an extremely long list of response options. For example, in the National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) mail survey, respondents are asked to select the job code that best describes their work from a long list of job codes (listed on a different page) that are categorized and arranged alphabetically to facilitate easy selection. While various aspects of the findings from this survey have been published, for instance, the effect of previously sent token incentives on subsequent contact rates (see Dillman (2007), page 241), little is known about the measurement error aspect of using extremely long response lists. Read more