Hello everyone.
One question we are frequently asked is “What is the refusal rate (or cooperation rate) for telephone, mall, mail or online interviewing that I can expect?” Generally people are looking for a number – 20%, 15%, 5% -- to expect for a study or a type of study.
Usually the questioner believes that I should know because I am the Director of Respondent Cooperation. The answer is difficult, but also instructive, because it clarifies the problems our industry has in increasing respondent cooperation.
First, you have to tell me how you measure respondent cooperation. To identify a respondent as being non-cooperative, you have to reach the respondent and the respondent (or the respondent’s agent) has to say they won’t participate. Five callbacks to an answering machine does not necessarily mean the respondent is not cooperating – it might mean the respondent is busy or out of town. Now let’s say you get a respondent and the respondent says he/she cannot cooperate. It is likely that either the respondent is a habitual refuser or just someone who can’t talk to you that minute or for that survey. If you had offered a more convenient time or another mode of interviewing you might have gotten the interview. There are many other reasons for cooperation. Here’s how I replied to one inquiry:
We should always be cognizant that survey cooperation can be impacted by many factors -- who the respondents are, how rare they are in the population (some business targets for surveys are so inured to being interviewed that they don't want to be spoken to), how long the interview is, what the product class is that we are interviewing about, how the research company identifies itself (JD Powers gets higher cooperation rates than less well known companies), how many call backs are used to screen them, whether they are offered another time or medium in which to do the interview, whether a preliminary letter is sent out prior to the phone call, and most importantly the level of training of the interviewer.
There is also a tendency on the part of some researchers to make multiple attempts to try to convert respondents. I was really surprised when, at a respondent cooperation conference in Portland several years ago, I heard that some government research uses as many as 50 callbacks to reach a respondent. (This is OK if the phone doesn’t answer, but if messages are being left on answering machines or with other people in the household to convince a respondent that they should cooperate, then I would be very worried.)
Respondents are resources that we use that are limited in size and scope. “Manhandling” or “harassing” a respondent to gain cooperation in a specific survey can forever turn them off to our industry. They must be allowed to refuse us if they want to, but we also have the ability to increase response rates by the way our interviewers are trained, the way we introduce ourselves to the respondents, and by calling them back if they are not at home or offering them an alternative time.
Like any other communication between people, once they say “no” their refusal must be honored. Therefore, I believe (and don’t quote this as CMOR policy) that there is only one kind of refuser -- the one who says “no” for the study. But before the refusal there is much room for us to get them to say “yes” -- by the way we solicit them, by the empathy we develop, and by getting them to value and take interest in our survey.
Much of this ability to convince the respondent lies in the training of the interviewers and the professionals that write the questionnaires (CMOR offers courses in training), but thinking that we can get respondents to change their minds once they have given us a definite “no” is skirting the line of treating the respondent as an ally. I’d rather not interview a respondent for a study on a topic they are not interested or involved in to get them to cooperate at another time in a topic that interests them.
Since training is so important, I can remind you of a great training opportunity that will be presented to the industry at the CMOR Conference in September.
I promise you that you will gain more knowledge and insight on how to improve respondent cooperation during this meeting than you can anywhere else. Here are the details:
Title: Protecting Our Assets IV
Dates: September, 7-9th 2005 Washington, DC
Location: Hotel Washington
Visit the www.CMOR.org website for registration information
Register now and you will increase cooperation rates across the board.
*Harry Heller can be reached at hheller@cmor.org. |
