Follow-Up

Participants

In the conduct of survey research, interviewers often have to make multiple attempts to schedule face-to-face and telephone interviews. When face-to-face interviews are being administered, appointments generally need to be scheduled in advance. However, participants’ schedules may make this simple task difficult. In some cases, multiple telephone calls and/or letters may be required in order to set up a single interview. In other cases (e.g., national census), follow-up may be required because participants were either not at home or were busy at the time of the interviewer's visits. Likewise, in the case of telephone interviews, interviewers may need to call potential participants several times before they are actually successful in getting participants on the phone.

With mail surveys, properly timed (i.e., predefined follow-up dates—usually every 2 weeks) follow-up reminders are an effective strategy to improve overall response rates. Without such reminders, mail response rates are likely to be less than 50%. Follow-up reminders generally take one of two forms: a letter or postcard reminding potential participants about the survey and encouraging them to participate, or a new survey package (i.e., a copy of the survey, return envelope, and a reminder letter). The latter technique generally proves to be more effective because many potential participants either discard mail surveys as soon as they are received or are likely to misplace the survey if it is not completed soon after receipt.

Review New Developments

During a particular research study, any number of new developments can occur that would require follow-up action to correct. For example, a pilot study may reveal that certain questions were worded in such an ambiguous manner that most participants skipped the questions. To correct this problem, the questions would need to be reworded and a follow-up pilot study would need to be administered to ascertain clarity of the reworded questions. Likewise, a supervisor may discover that one or more telephone interviewers are not administering their telephone surveys according to protocol. This would require that some follow-up training be conducted for those interviewers.

Project Milestones

Research activities require careful monitoring and follow-up to ensure that things are progressing smoothly. Major deviations from project milestones generally require quick follow-up action to get the activity back on schedule to avoid schedule slippage and cost overruns.

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