A COMPARISON OF NONRESPONSE IN MAIL, TELEPHONE, AND FACE-TO-FACE SURVEYS - APPLYING MULTILEVEL MODELING TO METAANALYSIS

This article reports a meta-analysis of 45 studies that explicitly com pare the response obtained using a mail, telephone or face-to-face sur vey. The data analysis uses a generalized hierarchical linear model. S ampling procedure (e.g., local convenience sample, random general samp le), saliency of topic, and research organization (university, governm ent versus market research) had an effect on the response. On the aver age, the face-to-face condition achieved the highest completion rate ( 70.3%), the telephone survey the next highest (67.2%), and the mail su rvey the lowest (61.3%). There is a significant interaction with the y ear of publication: The response to face-to-face and telephone surveys is going down in the period covered by this analysis (1947 to 1992), but the response to mail surveys is going up slightly. We attribute th is to the large amount of research on nonresponse problems with mail s urveys, and recommend more research and development in this direction for face-to-face and telephone methods.