The Impact of a Personalized Mail Questionnaire

Faced with the necessity of collecting extensive data from 1,452 recent liberal arts graduates dispersed about the globe, this researcher devised a personalized approach in the hope that at least 90 percent would respond. Individual letters were prepared with the help of computers and signed by college professors close to the graduates. Using this appeal together with a short follow-up letter, and a third in some cases, a return of over 92 percent of the long questionnaires was achieved within 2 months. The number and quality of the returns established the personalized approach as feasible, relatively inexpensive, and highly .successful for large numbers.