Raising Response Rates in Mail Surveys of Small Business Owners: Results of an Experiment

William J. Dennis jr.

Journal of Small Business Management, 2003, vol. 41, issue 3, 278-295

Abstract: Mail surveys of small business owners have notoriously low response rates, creating the potential for substantial error in surveys of this population and diminishing the credibility of research conducted on small firms. The author recently carried out an experiment as part of a larger project involving 16,000 small business owner/members of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). The experiment's purpose was to ascertain survey treatments that might enhance mail survey response among small business owners. Results showed that none of the six treatments examined improved response rates enough to warrant its routine use over the alternative, nor did any combinations of treatments help. The implication is that commonly used treatments, for example prenotification, often are unproductive.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1540-627X.00082 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:ujbmxx:v:41:y:2003:i:3:p:278-295

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ujbm20

DOI: 10.1111/1540-627X.00082

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Small Business Management is currently edited by Eric Liguori

More articles in Journal of Small Business Management from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().