Response Quality in Telephone Surveys

Abstract

Prepaid survey incentives are an attractive tool for attempting to combat declining response rates. However, researchers have expressed concern that the use of incentives may bring less motivated respondents into the sample, reducing response quality. In this paper, we explore whether a prepaid cash incentive in a telephone survey affected the prevalence of 11 indicators of response quality by comparing the answers of respondents who received a $5 incentive with those of respondents who did not receive one. Significant differences between the incentive and control groups are observed for only two of these 11 indicators; the respondents who received the incentive had less item nonresponse but spent less time per question. We find some evidence that these effects may be limited to the second half of the questionnaire. We also assess whether the effect of the incentive varied according to respondent characteristics, such as age, educational attainment, and household income, finding minimal evidence that this was the case. Overall, these findings should be reassuring for researchers considering the use of prepaid cash incentives.