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Mail Surveys and Paper Questionnaires
The U.S. postal system may seem a bit old-fashioned, but in many instances
mail surveys provide higher response rates than telephone surveys or online surveys.
That is, if 100 households were surveyed by mail, phone, and online, it’s
likely that a greater number of completed surveys would result from the mail survey.
This is especially true if incentives are offered, and if the topic of the survey
is of moderate to high interest, such as the new car recently purchased, or the
diamond engagement ring, or the music concert, etc. Mail response rates tend to
be lower among downscale consumers, but this is also true for the telephone and
the Web.
Decision Analyst provides complete mail survey services, including: questionnaire
design and layout, printing, mailing, incentive fulfillment, response tracking,
coding open-ends, data
entry, tabulation, statistical
analysis, and reporting.
Mail Survey Expertise
- Postcard or letter invitations to an online survey
- Warranty card receipt and processing, online and offline
- Multipage paper questionnaires
Types of Research Suited for Mail Surveys
Mail Surveys Versus Online Surveys
Mail surveys provide the widest reach, since almost everyone has a known mail
address. However, only a subset of the population may be reached by online surveys.
Not everyone is online. Many will not grant permission to be reached by email.
Many do not belong to online panels. Mail surveys are best for high-interest product
categories, where participants are most likely to respond to mail surveys.
Mail Questionnaire Design and Layout
Since mail surveys are the original self-administered questionnaires, they
need to be simple and easy to understand, with no skip patterns (if possible)
and with a minimum number of open ends. Decision Analyst has developed hundreds
of mail questionnaires over the years, and prides itself on exemplary mail surveys.
When the informational needs of a project dictate a more complicated questionnaire
design, Decision Analyst can program the questionnaire online, and then mail survey
invitations to invite potential respondents to the online survey.
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance is exacting, and mail surveys are carefully monitored at
every step in the process by Decision Analyst’s Quality Assurance Department.
Before printing, all materials are carefully proofed by the Quality Assurance
Department. Once the surveys are printed and inserted into the envelopes, they
are inspected for completeness and matching IDs. As questionnaires are completed
and returned, each questionnaire is checked against the original sample to prevent
duplicates and uninvited respondents. Data entry accuracy is 99.95% (after data
entry and 100% verification).
Cost Estimates
If you need a cost estimate for a mail survey project, please contact Lisa
Hazen (lhazen@decisionanalyst.com)
or Jerry W. Thomas (jthomas@decisionanalyst.com)
or by calling 1-800-ANALYSIS (262-5974) or 1-817-640-6166.
