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Impacts of transition statements in survey questions on survey break-off: evidence from a survey experiment
Impacts of transition statements in survey questions on survey break-off: evidence from a survey experiment
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- CHIS working paper series
- Author(s):
- Fu, Jiangzhou, author
Hughes, Todd, author
Park, Royce, author - Contributor(s):
- UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, issuing body.
- Publication:
- [Los Angeles, California] : UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, December 2022
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Data Collection -- methods
Health Surveys -- statistics & numerical data
California - Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) has employed an addressed-based sampling (ABS) frame with a mail push-to-web interview followed by a telephone nonresponse follow-up as the primary data collection approach since 2019. However, the nature of the self-administered web survey results in more survey break-offs than the previous computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI). During CHIS 2021 data collection, the CHIS team observed that a large proportion of questions with high break-off incidence began with transition statements, such as “The following questions are about…” or “These next questions are about...”. Therefore, experiments were warranted to test whether eliminating transition statements leads to a reduction in survey break-offs during CHIS 2022. This study evaluates an experiment conducted in CHIS 2022, where respondents were evenly split and randomly assigned to two conditions: (1) a treatment group where transition statements were removed from the selected twenty-six questions; (2) a control group with the original question wording, including transition statements. Our data demonstrate that eliminating transition statements results in substantive survey break-offs reductions. Aggregated break-offs from the twenty-six questions have decreased by 44.2%. For individual questions, reduction rates range from 14% to 82%. Results also show that removing the transition statements converted sufficient partials to fully completes and slightly shortened interview length. Consequently, all transition statements except an outlier have been removed for the remainder of the CHIS 2022 and transition statements will be less likely to be included in new survey question development for the CHIS.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file ( 13 unnumbered pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918591672606676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918591672606676