Contact strategies (respondent driven contacting, extra surveys) 

SBI contributors 

Dr. Arne Bethmann, Charlotte Hunsicker, Prof. Dr. Michael Bergmann, Alexander Schumacher

Project description

The primary aim of the project is to assess whether and to what extent contact rates — and subsequently response rates — can be improved by offering respondents a way to contact the interviewer/survey agency and, ideally, make an immediate appointment for an interview. We will do this through a randomised experiment in the German and Swedish SHARE refreshment samples in Wave 10. The control group of the sample will receive the standard invitation letter as sent out in previous waves. The experimental group will receive an adapted version, including a section that encourages respondents to make contact and provides them with ways to do so (e.g. by email, phone, instant message, website, etc.). This design will allow us to easily compare the effectiveness of both versions of the invitation letter by looking at the differences in contact and response rates. In addition, we will learn if there are differences in effectiveness within the country-specific operational settings of Sweden and Germany. 

Status

Active

Selected publications 

N/A 

Selected presentations 

Bergmann, M., Bethmann, A., Schumacher, A. T., Hunsicker, C., Fors Connolly, F., Malmberg, G., & Olofsson, J. (2025, Juli 17). Respondent Driven Contact Experiment: Testing Prepaid Incentives and Contact Strategies. 11th Conference of the European Survey Research Association (ESRA), Utrecht, the Netherlands. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16901428