A Methodological Study of Mail Surveys

这是一份探索性研究（SGER）小额拨款申请，用于研究邮件调查的回复率和回应偏差。拟议的研究将与底特律地区调查计划于1992年春季进行的一项已排定的调查相联系。这项研究将使用面对面的访谈来收集有关种族态度和相关问题的数据。拟议的研究将从DAS样本中选择一个随机样本，并向这些受访者发送邮件调查，其中一些问题与个人访谈中的问题相同。正是与DAS研究的联系提供了申请SGER资助而不是常规研究资助的理由。本研究将对问卷调查中反应率和反应偏差的研究做出两项重要贡献。首先，与高度专业的面对面调查相比，它将提供邮件调查可以获得的回复率的衡量标准。这是调查研究中的一个重要问题，因为邮件调查比面对面访谈要便宜得多。该研究的第二个贡献将是检验这样一个假设，即通过自我管理的问卷调查，受访者在敏感问题上比面对面访谈更坦诚。1992年DAS研究的主题是种族态度——这是一个众所周知对社会可取性因素的影响相当敏感的主题。拟议的邮件调查将包括个人访谈中提出的一些相同问题，从而为比较两种不同数据收集方案下的答案提供基础。这部分研究的第二个组成部分是将同样的问卷邮寄给最近为大卫·杜克竞选路易斯安那州州长捐款的个人。研究的这一部分将集中于被认为对种族态度问卷中提出的许多问题不同情的样本的回复率，并将他们所陈述的观点与随机选择的样本的观点进行比较。

This is a request for a Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) to do a study of mail survey response rates and response bias. The proposed study would be linked to an already scheduled survey planned by the Detroit Area Survey (DAS) in the spring of 1992. This study will use face-to-face interviews to collect data on racial attitudes and related issues. The proposed study would select an random sample from the DAS sample and send these respondents a mail survey where some of the questions are identical to those asked in personal interviews. It is the linkage to the DAS study that provides the rationale for requesting a SGER grant rather than a regular research grant. The proposed study will make two important contributions to the study of response rates and response bias in surveys. First it will provide a measure of the response rates that can be obtained with mail surveys compared to a highly professional face-to-face survey. This is an important issue in survey research because mail surveys are much less expensive than face- to-face interviews. The second contribution of the study will be to test the hypothesis that with self-administered questionnaires respondents are more candid about sensitive issues than they are in face-to-face interviews. The topic of the 1992 DAS study is racial attitudes--a topic that is known to be quite sensitive to the influence of social desirability factors. The proposed mail survey would include some of the same questions asked in the personal interviews thus providing a basis for comparing the answers under two different data collections scenarios. A second component of this part of the study would mail out the same questionnaire to individuals who contributed money to the recent campaign of David Duke to become governor of Louisiana. This part of the study will focus on the response rate of a sample believed to be unsympathetic to many of the issues raised in the questionnaire on racial attitudes and on a comparison of their stated views with those of the randomly selected sample.