Industry Survey Respondent Cooperation Audit This article is reproduced with permission from the Council for Marketing and Opinion Research (CMOR). It appeared in the October 1998 issue of CMOR Industry Watch. CMOR was established to protect the value that marketing and opinion research represents to the public and industry. CMOR accomplishes this by: influencing legislation and regulations for the protection of the marketing and opinion research process; preventing passage of restrictive legislation while working to balance the need for information against the right of individual privacy; and promoting internal research practices to encourage respondent cooperation and self regulation. For more information, contact CMOR at 516/928-6206 or info@cmor.org. In early 1997 CMOR undertook a project to update refusal rate information. Forty CMOR and Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO) member firms were recruited to keep track of all their phone research for the month of April 1997. This yielded 385 surveys with a total base of 243,597 interviews for which we had sample disposition data and some basic facts provided about subject matter or purposse of the survey, length of interview, client identification, type of sample, and use of incentives. Refusal Rate Refusal rate was calculated using the industsry-accepted definition as follows: Refusal Rate = (Total Refused) / (Total Contacts) Total Refused = Initial Refusals + Breakoffs + Qualified Refusals Total Contacted = Total Refused + Eligible Resp. Not Available + Language Barrier + Completed Interview Preliminary Findings Phone refusal rates have gone up from 40% in a 1988 Your Opinion Counts project to 46% in this study. The 58% refusal rate generated in the 1995 CMOR study, while higher than the overall rate we determined from this study, was confirmed at 58% when compared to the 24 comparable studies from this audit. (Those done with the general public, RDD sample, 10 to 20 minute interview, no disclosure of interview length, no incentive.) It's no surprise that keeping the interview length short improves cooperation. Interview Refusal Rate 5 minutes or less 32% 10 minutes 45% 15 minutes 46% 20 minutes 56% Over 20 minutes 57% Disclosing the length of the interview in the introductions seems to improve cooperataion regardless of the length of the interview (the base sizes for disclosed are small). Refusal Rate Interview Length Disclosed Length Not Disclosed 5 minutes or less 18% 38% 6-10 minutes 35% 46% 11-15 minutes 41% 47% 16 minutes or more 42% 55% Honest disclosure of facts during the interview introduction has a positive effect on cooperation. Refusal Rate Interview Length Disclosed 34% Length Not Disclosed 52% Client Identified 29% Client Not Identified 54% Subject Matter Disclosed 43% Subject Not Disclosed 61% However, providing reassurance in the interview introduction of what this survey is not did not appear to improve cooperation. Refusal Rate Not a Sales Attempt 51% No Mention of Sales 43% Responses Confidential 48% Confidentiality Not Mentioned 46% Back to Sawtooth News Index