Making it worthwhile might involve paying the respondent a small amount, or making a donation to a charity, or entering them in a sweepstakes for an attractive prize, or simply making them feel that their input is significant on an issue that affects them personally. Knowledge of what the population is likely to value is crucial. But rewards are not the only thing that counts in convincing people to participate in a survey. Table 1 summarizes some Web research projects with different rewards and different recruitment techniques. The projects were conducted by Swift Interactive Technologies.
Response rates are in the right-hand two columns.
Recruiting and Incentives for Web Surveys. As you can see, the highest response rates are not necessarily those where the most money was offered. Response rates were lowest for the projects that surveyed general site visitors, and highest for those recruited by a traditional mail letter or telephone call. Recruitment is more important than reward. For banner recruitments, a sweepstakes proved to be an effective recruitment technique, as well as being less expensive to administer than processing thousands of individual payments.