Response Effects in Mail Surveys

Abstract

A variety of response effects that had been found previously in interview surveys were tested in a mail survey of a heterogeneous local population. These included experiments on question order response order, no-opinion filters, middle-response alternatives, and acquiescence. The results generally supported earlier findings based on student samples which had shown that order efects were eliminated in self-administered surveys but that question-form effects occurred as in interview surveys. One question-order effect, however, was found in the mail survey, and a type of response-order effect (a primacy effect) that had not been previously tested also occured. Interactions between education and response effects that had sometimes been found in interview surveys were not present in the mail survey.