Improving Mail Survey Responses from UK Academics: some empirical findings

Despite numerous studies on how to elicit maximum mail survey response, the paper argues that very few are useful when surveying the views of UK academics. The paper reviews the organisational response literature, identifies salient response inducers and reports results of a survey to assess the attitudes of UK academics across a wide range of disciplines toward these response inducers (N = 497). The best inducer was to use a covering letter of explanation with the questionnaire, whilst the most negative item was the questionnaire being over four pages long. Differences in response rate, speed and quality between academics are also documented. Survey response rates varied widely across departments from 30–63%, with a noticeable gradient from the social to the physical sciences. Implications for mail survey design are discussed.