Incentive Effects on Nonresponse and Data Quality

Abstract – A considerable body of research shows that prepaid incentives increase response rates in mail surveys (e.g., Church 1993, Singer &Ye 2013). This increase can sometimes be due to an increase in a certain type of respondent that may have participated at lower levels without the incentive (Petrolia and Bhattacharjee 2009, Stinger and Kulka 2002), thus impacting nonresponse bias in survey estimates (Groves 2006). However, most incentive studies focus on response rates; only a small handful have assessed the impact of incentives on nonresponse bias (Groves and Peytcheva 2008).Even fewer studies have looked at the effects of incentives on data quality. These studies have looked at item nonresponse between $2 and $5 incentives (Shaw et al., 2001), the number of words, comments, and short answers provided by the respondents. (James & Bolstein, 1990), and completeness (Hansen, 1980).This presentation will report the results of a prepaid cash incentive experiment ($0 vs. $1) conducted in the 2014 Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS)(n=1,018). The NASIS is an annual mail, omnibus survey of Nebraska adults with sample drawn from the USPS Delivery Sequence File.First, response rates by experimental treatment will be reported, but analyses will also compare the demographic make-up of the completed samples for the incentivized versus non-incentivized treatments and compare both treatments to American Community Survey population estimates in order to understand if the incentive impacted the makeup of the completed sample in ways that would be expected to impact nonresponse bias. Primary demographics of interest include age, gender, race, education level, income, marital status, and presence of children in the home. Respondents and nonrespondents from each group will also be compared by region as a way of measuring nonresponse bias. Responses to the 2014 NASIS will also be compared by experimental group in order to understand if the incentivized group responded differently than the non-incentivized group controlling for demographics. The 2014 NASIS asked questions on a range of items including natural resources, underage drinking, safety, vaccinations, the Affordable Care Act, and plant management.Next, survey responses will be analyzed in order to understand the incentive effects, if any, on data quality. The two experimental groups will be compared on item nonresponse, the number of words provided to an open-ended question, the use of nonsubstantive answer options, primacy, and straight-lining.

Keywords – Incentive, nonresponse, data quality

Focus Statement – Incentive effects are frequently studied in terms of response rates. However, this presentation will look at nonresponse bias and data quality as well.

Rita Ann Spencer Koontz went to heaven to be with Jesus on September 15, 2018 after a quick, vigorous battle with bone cancer. Rita was born in Troy, Idaho on September 2, 1947 to Clyde and Althea Spencer. Rita had 5 siblings. Her two older sisters, Louise Spencer Logsdon and Karen Spencer, both preceded her in death. She has two brothers, David Spencer and John Spencer, and a younger sister Katherine Spencer Burnham. Rita was raised in Troy, Idaho and at 17 married Kenny Koontz whom she would often describe as the handsomest man she had ever seen. They were married on August 28, 1965 and beginning their married life which took them to North Carolina and Maine as her husband Kenny served in the Air Force. After the Air Force, Ken and Rita moved back to Moscow. They had three children who married fantastic partners: Laura Koontz Buno (Jey Buno), Andy Koontz (Jody Podrabsky Koontz) and Kendra Koontz Bizeau (Luke Bizeau). Ken & Rita have 9 grandchildren: Breann (18), Emma (15), Jeydan (13), Oakley (12), Levi (11), AJ (9), Blaze (9), Harper (8) and Sydney (8), who Rita loved with all her heart. Ken & Rita were glowing as they celebrated 50 years of marriage with their friends and family in 2015. Rita spent her life in service to others and when you met Rita, you were a better person just for knowing her. She would have prepared a meal for you, cleaned for you, prayed for you or served you in some special way that was exactly what you needed at exactly that moment. In 2016, after celebrating 42 years at the SESRC at WSU (Pullman), Rita retired, and she and Ken moved to Vancouver, WA to be near 6 of their grandchildren and both of their daughters. Most recently, Rita loved to travel with Ken by her side, beamed with pride as their son, Andy, was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in the Army and enthusiastically enjoyed annual trips to New York City with her daughters, Laura and Kendra, and her daughter-in-law, Jody. Rita lived life to the fullest and never held regret. She loved God, her family and her community. Rita’s kindness, strength of spirit, wisdom, and heart for serving will always be remembered by those who were lucky enough to know and love her.
Memorial services will be held at Moscow Church of the Nazarene at 11:00 am in Moscow, Idaho on Saturday, October 20th, 2018.
In lieu of flowers and in loving memory, donations on Rita’s behalf can be made to The Hope Center, PO Box 8622, Moscow, ID 83843.

Social Activities Available (not facilitated by IFD&TC):
Mid City Bayou Boogaloo Music Festival
The 11th annual “Mid City Bayou Boogaloo” is a FREE arts and music festival held each year at a park along the river in Mid-City New Orleans. This year it is happening on Friday 5/19 – Sunday 5/21 just before the conference. There will be plenty of great music, food, arts and crafts and good times to be had! It is either a 20 minute cab ride from the hotel or a fun ride on the historic Canal Street Streetcar.
Walk from the Westin Hotel to Harrah’s Casino (0.1 miles); Get on the 47 (Canal Cemeteries) streetcar (about 20 minute ride); Walk 0.5 miles Northwest on Canal Street towards Jefferson Davis Parkway
Or tell the driver to take you to the park: 803 N Jefferson Davis Pkwy, New Orleans, LA 70119

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Restaurants:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurants-g60864-zfn8594421-New_Orleans_Louisiana.html

Nola – one of Emeril’s http://emerilsrestaurants.com/nola-restaurant
Café du Monde – is a tourist must – http://www.cafedumonde.com/ get there early!
http://barcadianeworleans.com/
https://www.lucysretiredsurfers.com/neworleans/
http://emerilsrestaurants.com/meril
http://www.labocasteaks.com/

Welcome

https://www.sylvainnola.com/

Home

http://www.dragosrestaurant.com/
http://www.pecherestaurant.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Vics-Kangaroo-Cafe/111506342223010
http://www.mollysatthemarket.net/

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Night Walking Tours: Michael, Lindsey
https://www.viator.com/New-Orleans-tours/Night-Tours/d675-g12-c96
http://www.bigeasytours.us/productType/NIGHT/mpt/353
http://www.freetoursbyfoot.com/new-orleans-tours/ (Has free walking tours of everything, even night stuff)
http://www.nosecretstours.com/ (Has haunted/ghost tours and a voodoo tour. I’d be willing to pay and take one if people are interested.)

Music Venues:
http://www.neworleans.com/nightlife/
Bourbon Street:
The Jazz Playhouse (504) 553-2299 · 300 Bourbon St New Orleans, LA 70130
The Jazz Playhouse, the best jazz club in town showcasing New Orleans’ greatest Jazz talents and serving your favorite cocktails and appetizers in a luxurious and intimate venue on the lobby level of the hotel. Shows begin at 8 p.m.
https://www.sonesta.com/us/louisiana/new-orleans/royal-sonesta-new-orleans/jazzplayhouse

FRITZEL’S EUROPEAN JAZZ PUB 733 Bourbon Street, New Orleans, LA 70117 (504)-586-4800
Oldest operated Jazz club in New Orleans, Fritzel’s is situated in an historic 1831 building nestled in the heart of New Orleans’ storied French Quarter. Since its founding in October 1969, it has become a mecca for Jazz lovers and Musicians alike.
http://www.fritzelsjazz.net/

The Funky Pirate Blues Club at 727 Bourbon Street
The Best Blues Club on Bourbon Street is undoubtedly the famous and fun Funky Pirate™ featuring the internationally acclaimed “Big Al Carson” (495 pounds of pure New Orleans Blues) & The Blues Masters is open at 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and at Noon Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Other great local talent is spotlighted for Blues and Jazz such as Marc Stone, and Mark Pentone
http://thefunkypirate.com/

Frenchman Street:
Blue Nile 532 Frenchmen, St, New Orleans, LA 70116 Phone: (504) 948-2583
A range of acts from funk & blues to brass bands takes the stage at this longtime live music bar.
http://bluenilelive.com/
Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro, 626 Frenchmen St, New Orleans, LA 70116 Phone: (504) 949-0696
The club books strong jazz talent, among best in NOLA. Two levels for the audience (upstairs/downstairs), intimate atmosphere but concert rather than club. Altogether, a very good place to listen to high brow jazz, not so good for blues or jam sessions. Arrive early (45 mins?) as it is first come /first serve, and the front tables are much better.

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Spotted Cat Music Club 623 Frenchmen St, New Orleans, LA 70116 Phone: (504) 943-3887
If you’re looking for some live music (specifically some smooth jazz), you can’t go wrong with the Spotted Cat, which hosts live bands every night of the week, just steps from the French Quarter.
https://www.spottedcatmusicclub.com/

D.B.A. 618 Frenchmen St, New Orleans, LA 70116 Phone: (504) 942-3731
This music club features performances by local and regional acts every night of the week, and all tickets are first come, first serve. When you’re not nodding your head to some tunes, you can partake in the killer selection of wine, cocktails and draft beers that’s available. Or you can do both at the same time, whatever.
http://www.dbaneworleans.com/

The Maison 508 Frenchmen St, New Orleans, LA 70116 Phone: (504) 371-5543
With three stages and a restaurant, this Frenchmen St music hall is bound to have something up your alley, if your alley is one in which you like to boogie. It features live music every single day, too, so whenever the spirit takes you, you can show up and see who’s ripping it up on stage, from jazz to funk, almost every act is a seriously dance-able one.

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Dance Venues:
https://www.thrillist.com/drink/new-orleans/the-best-nightclubs-in-new-orleans

Additional Info:
Top things to do : https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g60864-Activities-New_Orleans_Louisiana.html
Mardi Gras World: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60864-d104455-Reviews-Blaine_Kern_s_Mardi_Gras_World-New_Orleans_Louisiana.html
Riverboat Cruise: https://www.tripadvisor.com/AttractionProductDetail?product=3780STEAM&d=60864&aidSuffix=xsell&partner=Viator

2016 Suggested Field Topics

Share the challenges you’ve encountered and solutions you’ve developed from your organization’s work in the following areas:

• Center Management and Staff Training Suggestions
• Survey Methodology Suggestions
• Technology From the Field Perspective Suggestions

• The Lone Interviewer: With the increasing use of technology, how do we avoid having interviewing staff “feel alone” in their work? Specifically, with a heavy emphasis on cost reduction and ongoing expansion of technological solutions to guide case selection, interviewer strategies, training (online videos), and remote supervision, what are organizations doing within this environment to build a sense of comradery, team, connection, morale among their staff who work from home? Having remote staff meet in person is costly and usually not within a survey budget.

• Project Management Approach: The philosophy and consequences of moving to a more formalized Project Management approach (PMI) with survey centers, changes in the approach to survey management (i.e. expert in technology vs. expert in survey for some projects), dealing with all of the day-to-day issues.

• Managing and sustaining your survey center: Effective approaches to developing management skills in your staff, tools and strategies such as the use of social media for marketing your center, changing your center’s image, building and sustaining new client relationships, standardizing procedures across programs

• Working within your organization or university: Tips for working within your university or larger organization to educate and adapt policies to meet the needs of survey research, working with Human Resources on unusual or unique staffing needs.

• Human Subjects Issues: Educating accounting and IRB staff about incentives, sensitivity of collecting biomarkers, educating IRB’s about best practices in survey research.

• New Issues with Interviewer Hiring: Background check requirements, federal background checks and investigations, and other new(er) requirements that impact the hiring process.

• Federally Funded Survey Issues: The OMB role, timing, research design concerns.

• Interviewer Quality Control: Barriers, concerns, and applications of recording interviews. What impact does the move to Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) have on your center, if any. How are shops consenting respondents and providing feedback to interviewers. What do you do with low performers? Retrain, terminate, provide shadow observations, develop group building experiences, etc.?

• Managing Clients and Client Satisfaction: How to re-shape current client-center relationships, approaches to successfully convince clients of your expertise, how to evaluate client satisfaction, and act on satisfaction feedback.

• 50th Anniversary of IFD&TC: What has changed? What has stayed the same? Trends or patterns over the last 50 years.

• Interviewers: How do you hire the “perfect” interviewer? What traits or capabilities make an interviewer successful? How much of this can be “trained” to new and existing interviewer staff? What do interviewers need to know prior to training (i.e. familiarity with health care terms)? What skills do they need (i.e. biomarker measurement)? Different qualities for CATI vs. Field interviewers?

• Respondent Refusals: When is a “no” a “NO!”? How do we convince respondents to participate without harassing them? Are there lines that should not be crossed with respondents regarding persuasion, cajoling, urging, and convincing participation? How does respect for the respondent play into getting acceptable response rates? How can you avoid getting a “no”? How can you turn a “no” into a “yes”?

• Data Falsification: What counts as falsification? Why does it happen? What are the methods to detect it? Investigate it? How do you repair the damage? How do you prevent it?

• Using Social Media: How can social media be used to recruit, retain, and inform our respondents? What are the risks? Benefits?

• International or Cross-National Research including Multi-cultural and/or multi-language research: Survey translation, cultural adaptation of survey measures, working with multi-cultural data collection teams, gaining community cooperation, identifying appropriate sampling frames.

• Evaluation research: Bringing best practice in data collection methods to research evaluating programs, interventions, and organizational initiatives.

• Response Rate, Sample design, and weighting: Experience with address-based sampling, targeted mail or telephone lists, (small geographic or demographic groups), mixing random-digit dialing and cell phone lists, how to find statistical support to for complex sampling and weighting needs, tools and tips for managing web-based samples. Do response rates still matter or have most moved to new(er) measures of data quality? How are declining response rates explained or justified to clients?

• Operational Issues: Studies with experimental designs that help determine operational changes. Any topic welcome—for example, incentive amounts, call attempts, call windows, etc.

• Respondent incentives: Use and effectiveness of differential incentives (why and how you use them, implications for communication to respondents, navigating institutional review boards), effective alternatives to cash incentives, use of electronic incentives (e.g., gift card codes delivered electronically), impact of Federal limitations on incentives, what do we do when incentives are not an option.

• Mining interviewer observation data: Using interviewer observations from interview attempts, refusals, or completed attempts to inform study management (reduce cost, reduce selective non-response, and increase response rates).

• Community-based participatory research: Collaborating with community-based organizations, building and sustaining community partnerships, engaging the community.

• Mixed & Multi-Mode: Maximizing participation rates and representativeness of respondents, managing sample and contact attempts, increasing data quality, especially blending of “tried and true” methods and mobile phone samples.

• Optimization of mobile devices and visual design: Practical advice/solutions for optimizing surveys based on high quality visual design across platforms and mobile devices. How do you technologically manage standardization across platforms and devices?

• Using Paradata: In what ways are you building paradata collection into your projects? How is this being done in a way that is accessible for field and project management staff? What are the technical considerations?

• Technology, friend or foe: Communication and interaction with study participants and/or project staff across a range of technology platforms and devices (social media, email, SMS, web, Smartphones, handheld devices, etc.). What are the implications for our centers of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), including specific phone & software set-ups that are compliant)? Advantages and disadvantages of different web and CATI software packages.

• Embracing new technologies: Use of web panels or crowd sourcing to collect data, new approaches to tracking and locating respondents, web-based focus groups, using social media and other technology to communicate with longitudinal or panel study participants or invite study participation.

• Project Management Software: Available options and pros and cons of different approaches, including a discussion on how events and budgets are handled.

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