Assessing the Effectiveness of the Tailored Design Method for Increasing Response Rates of Mail Surveys in Japan

Abstract

Survey research is commonly conducted in the United States and other Western countries to understand a particular population’s characteristics, behaviors, or opinions; however, few studies have been conducted in Japan to adopt survey methodologies such as the Tailored Design Method developed in the United States. In Japan, mail surveys are generally considered to achieve no more than a 20-40% response rate, and since the mid-1970s, overall response rates in Japanese surveys have declined by about 10 percentage points. Our research is one of the first studies to use the Tailored Design Method in Japan to conduct a mail survey. We compared response rates of our survey about people’s attitudes toward bears and wildlife management to response rates of other mail surveys with similar content to see the effectiveness of the Tailored Design Method. Response rates in two study sites, Nagano, an urban city, and Otari, a rural village were 48.3% and 66.7% respectively, using the Tailored Design Method. The response rate in Otari was significantly higher than those of other rural villages in previous surveys. The response rate for Nagano was comparable to results of rural villages even though response rates in metropolitan areas are usually lower than those of rural areas. The Tailored Design Method may be profitably applied in Japan and other societies in order to improve survey response rates.