>Introduction to Mail Surveys
>Mail surveys can take a wide variety of forms; although they commonly consist of a paper survey that is completed by a respondent and mailed back. You will see these with various levels of quality and professionalism with product warranties, for customer service feedback, and in your mail. They are still popular because they can be very simple to construct and can often provide data at low cost.
Mail surveys are a good choice if the respondent is someone you know and/or they have an interest in the survey results, such as an existing customer or employee, or member of an organization. We also recommend the use of mail surveys where it is important that every member of the sample get the impression that their voice is important. A mail survey can also be used as a relationship building device, demonstrating that you are interest someone’s feedback
On the positive side, it can be easy to collect a large amount of data from mail surveys (although this depends on the exact methodology) – simply mail out a ton of surveys. They are not intrusive (as respondents are not interrupted at an inconvenient time) and they can respond when they want. And because mail is an archaic technology, you can reach nearly everyone you’ll want to survey with a mail or paper survey.
The biggest disadvantage of this type of survey is time, especially if you are mailing it both there and back. While surveys on the phone and internet can be completed in days, it usually takes two weeks at minimum to complete a mail survey (you’re looking at a week in post office transit alone). For this reason, mail surveys are often used to collect data on an ongoing basis for customer information like for product warranties, rather than for a quick snapshot type survey. You probably wouldn’t want to do your political poll by mail, for example.
Design of the Surveys
Unlike surveys conducted in person and by telephone, mail surveys don’t have an interviewer who can provide clarification or answer questions, so it is important to carefully consider the design of your survey and to troubleshoot problems that can lead to reduced question comprehension and errors in responses.
Avoid compressing and compacting questions. Too many questions on a page create confusion and can result in response errors. Survey testing shows that respondents will readily fill out a survey several pages in length provided they feel the survey is important.
Obtaining an Adequate Response Rate
Unless the survey is conducted among a highly engaged group (say employees of a company), we find that multiple mailings are almost always necessary to assure an adequate response. Our experience has shown that a first mailing of the survey, a reminder postcard, and a second mailing of the survey to non-respondents is the optimum approach and will result in a response rate that is 10-25% higher than a single mailing.
The Final Word
There is nothing sexy about conduct research via paper surveys or through the mail. But there is a reason they are still around and why you see them everywhere if you look carefully. They are a relatively inexpensive way to collect information at the respondents’ convenience, especially when you don’t have access to email addresses or not everyone you are surveying has easy access to the internet.
