The Costs of Using Pre-Paid Incentives in a Physician Survey

Abstract

The use of pre-paid monetary incentives in surveys of respondents with specialized knowledge, such as business executives and physicians, has been shown to help reduce overall survey administration costs. Current research suggests that by offering a cash incentive to respondents at the outset of data collection, survey managers may reduce the need for follow-up efforts. This paper uses the results of a survey of office-based physicians in the United States to put a finer point to another, perhaps overlooked component of this “cost saving.” Respondents and non-respondents alike often choose not to cash the checks. Almost all sample members who decline to complete a survey forego cashing the incentive check. About 1/3 of the physicians who responded, also did not cash their checks. This paper addresses two questions. The first question is: to what extent are pre-paid cash incentives misdirected to sample members who cash the check, but do not respond to the survey? A secondary question is: which physician specialties accept pre-paid monetary incentive? The answers to these questions have practical value. Survey managers need to anticipate the extent to which their funds (pre-paid incentives) will be misdirected to non-cooperating or ineligible sample members. Similarly, having a foundation on which to anticipate this risk can inform the proposed price of service to clients. Since this project sampled a variety of medical specialties, the results allow one to anticipate need for funds with some granularity, in that the results allow us to identify which medical specialties were most inclined to cash checks.