Applying Responsive Survey Design to Small-Scale Surveys: Campus Surveys of Sexual Misconduct

William G. Axinn, James Wagner, Mick Couper and Scott Crawford

Sociological Methods & Research, 2023, vol. 52, issue 4, 1916-1946

Abstract: Responsive survey design is a technique aimed at improving the efficiency or quality of surveys by using incoming data from the field to make design changes. The technique was pioneered on large national surveys, but the tools can also be applied on the smaller-scale surveys most commonly used by sociologists. We demonstrate responsive survey design in a small-scale, list-based sample survey of students on the topic of sexual misconduct. We investigate the impact of individual incentive levels and a two-phase responsive design with changes to mode of contact as approaches for limiting the potential of nonresponse bias in data from such surveys. Our analyses demonstrate that a two-phase design introducing telephone and face-to-face reminders to complete the survey can produce stronger change in response rates and characteristics of those who respond than higher incentive levels. These findings offer tools for sociologists designing smaller-scale surveys of special populations or sensitive topics.

Keywords: responsive survey design; climate surveys; survey nonresponse; sexual misconduct; survey methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00491241211031270 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:somere:v:52:y:2023:i:4:p:1916-1946

DOI: 10.1177/00491241211031270

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Sociological Methods & Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().