Mail Survey

Advantages and Disadvantages

By far, the most common advantage of carrying out a mail survey is the cost. It is relatively low priced compared to telephone and in-person modes of surveying, can be used to survey very large numbers of respondents in relatively short periods of time, and is especially cost-effective if the respondents are dispersed geographically. Oftentimes, data collection for a mail survey can begin more quickly than for a survey that involves interviewers, because of the time required to hire and train interviewers and the programming that is required to computerize and test a final version of the questionnaire that will be used in interviewer-administered surveying.

Another advantage of mail surveys is that respondents are afforded the time to produce answers that might be thought through more carefully, as opposed to when an interviewer-administered survey is conducted. Also, respondents can answer the survey questions at their convenience. Furthermore, the respondents are given privacy, which often is an important factor in their deciding to cooperate and in deciding to provide accurate responses, especially to sensitive questions. Visual and/or audio aids included in the mailed package can assist the respondents in completing the survey process accurately.

Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the United States in mail surveys of the general public as the difficulties of gathering survey data from the general public via telephone and concerns about coverage error have grown. In particular, with the rapid increase of the U.S. cell phone only population, it has become much more difficult for telephone surveys to reach their intended target population using the traditional random-digit dialing (RDD) landline telephone frame. At the same time, surveying persons reached via a cell phone in the United States is a very complex and costly undertaking, with many unknowns and uncertainties existing about how to do it right. In comparison, interest in address-based sampling frames that are wholly appropriate for mail surveys is rapidly increasing.

...