Hi Rosie
Postal surveys have notoriously low response rates: there's an entire
literature out there about it -- including on how to boost rates -- but at
the end of the day it's expensive in time and money.
How long is your survey? Depending on the length, there are other delivery
options, including email and the Internet. There are a number of
advantages to both these methods: (1) if you design things carefully you
won't have to do any data entry yourself; (2) reduced costs; (3) can
potentially reach a broader cross section of the public. There is a
growing literature on collecting data this way: the most recent I've seen
is a couple articles on the validity and ethics of Internet data
collection in the February and March 2005 issues of American Psychologist.
Don Dillman is an expert in this area -- see
http://survey.sesrc.wsu.edu/dillman/ .
Another possibility is distributing paper surveys through a health centre
or local hospital. Patients could pick up a survey in person.
Hope that's of some help.
Nicholas Gibson
--
Psychology and Religion Research Programme
Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge
West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9BS, UK
tel +44 (0)1223 763010 · fax +44 (0)1223 763003
http://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/pcp/personnel/nicholas.html
Today 11:06am, Rosie McEachan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was hoping that some of you might be able to give me advice on the
> following...
>
> I'm in the process of designing a relatively large scale postal survey
> as part of my health psychology PhD. The study will be cross-sectional,
> and involves rating various health behaviours along a number of
> evaluative dimensions. I need a minimum of 600 completed questionnaire,
> and they have to be completed by members of the general public ( I would
> preferably have a range of social classes).
>
> I am a bit unsure about how best to recruit this sample.... I've looked
> into getting a recruitment company to provide me with a list of
> addresses: if they used the postal address file (PAF) for example it
> would cost about £800 to provide me with a couple of thousand addresses
> (taking into account lower responses rates), but these letters would
> have to be addressed to 'the occupier', which would mean that the
> response rate could potentially be very low, and much more money would
> be spent on consumables etc..
>
> I don't think there will be a massive budget for me to use (if any at
> all), so I was wondering if anybody had any ideas about alternative ways
> in which I could get 600 completed surveys from members of the general
> public?
>
> Many thanks,
> Rosie
>
> Rosie McEachan
> Research Student
> Institute of Psychological Sciences
> University of Leeds
> Tel: 0113 343 6692
> (internal ext 36692)
> Fax: 0113 343 5749
>
>
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