1

How to reduce refusals

Maria Giuseppina Muratore

Total non response answer: different

typologies

• Families are not at all reached• Respondents selected never reached

• Interrupted interviews

• Family no more reached after appointments

• Refusals

– Who refuses has particular characteristics– Who answers to the telephone: dragging effect or filter

effect – Refusal of first stadium – Refusal of second stadium

How to know the structure of refusals• Control surveys on households that refused• To collect information on refusals’ population and the

motivation to refuse

Why do respondents refuse?• Typologies of refusals • Refusals that don’t depend by the respondents will,

more on circumstances• Refusals due to hostility and mistrust, suspicious• Refusals caused by the fear of loosing time• Refusals due to few availability and in defense of

privacy

Total non response answer: different

typologies

Tools to reduce refusals

• The introductory letters

• The toll free number

• Scheduling the mailing

• Brochure with key statistics and information notes for the respondents

• Find the best time and location for the interview

• The skilled and well trained interviewers

• About item non response

• Questionnaire : » Interest » Topic» Length» Internal coherence

• Scheduling the interview calendar

• Use of appointment

• Toll-free number data analysis

• Daily assistance

• Indicators monitoring system

• Analysis of refusals reasons from the refusal sheet

Tools to prevent non response in general

and refusals

A bridge of communication

• it is important to establish a bridge of communication between the Institution carrying out the survey and the selected respondents, before the real interviews

• Communication strategies are the introductory letter and the toll free number.

The introductory letters

• It produces a positive context with respondent preparing him/her to a more effective cooperation

• Official letter

• Based on content but also attention to graphic aspects to better involve the respondent

• To whom to address it: Respondent or household? It depends on the sample

• No name violence

The main issues• The presentation of the Institute carrying out the

survey

• Survey’s aim

• Who has to answer

• Explicative lines for the involvements (type of interview, days and hours of interviews)

• References to normative about obligations to answer and the protection of privacy and personal data

• Indication of the toll free number/ landline not free phone number of the Institute to reassure!

• Institute President/Chief sign

The toll free number

• It allows respondents to contact the national statistical agency before, during or after the interview for information and reassuring

• it should be activated soon after the mailing of the introductory letter

• staff responding to the calls have to be skilled and highly trained about:– the aims and content of the survey

– communication ability they can influence the willingness of callers to participate

– Also for them No name violence

Take notes from the citizens calls in an apposite sheet form:

To record moods, complaints, doubts of citizens; caller profile and call reasons :

For instance worries and refusals, the change of the family address, for giving a mobile number, or other information on their absence from home; or to inform about out of target situation.

» Everything is useful to be recorded

» A way to put under control the data collection, day by day, promptly catching eventual bad situations that could invalidate the survey quality.

The toll free number

Scheduling the mailing

• Attention to the lag between the arrival of the letter and the moment when the person will be contacted to be interviewed not to be too long otherwise they

forget it

• The interview should take place no more than one week/15 days after the letter arrival.

• Better to send it not to all respondents at the same time

• To verify the lag between the time in which the letter is sent and its effective arrival, it can be useful to send letters to some people of the survey staff or known people not belonging to the sample

• How to choose the best slot of number and time to estimate the individual/ household contacted that are closed each day (contacted and interviewed or dropped) is essential to plan the timing to send the next tranche of letters.

• The number of letters depends on various aspects: – the “work time” of selected households;

– length of the interview;

– number of interviewers;

– days and hours of the interviews…

• More than one letter can be sent in order to increase the response rate.

• Also incentives can be useful in order to reduce refusals

Scheduling the mailing

Brochure with key statistics and

information notes for the respondents

Materials that help to sensitize the units selected in the sample to participate in the survey:

• Informative brochure with key statistics can be prepared for citizens to maintain interest in participating in the survey

• Materials that facilitates the access to publicly available information (for example on a website, a guide to complete the questionnaire or helpline particularly for self-enumeration surveys)

• Letter thanking them for their participation

Find the best time and location for the

interview The ‘work time’ of selected households is a balance between several factors:

• Find the best time to call/visit the respondents

• Not exceed the useful maximum of number of call or visit attempts (some studies highlights a threshold)

• How many contacts to make at each sample unit?– usefulness of callbacks or return visits to the households, to ensure

that groups typically overrepresented among non-responders or reluctant participants are not underrepresented

– For GBV survey it is suitable to call/visit respondent, especially in case of women, in the morning too (when she is generally alone)

– Use the appointment strategy

The phases of interviews: conquering the

interview, keeping it, concluding it

• In terms of efficiency it is very good to realize the three phases in only one contact with respondent.

• In case of CATI technique, a higher percentage of interviews are concluded during the first two contacts

• % of concluded interviews in following contacts after the first two is 24% and is decreasing more and more

• After a specific number of contacts it is more efficient for the overall economy of the survey, to abandon that household, working the following scheduled nominative instead of insisting on it.

• Possible outcomes of a phone interview

• Possible outcomes of a personal interview

Disposition Codes

Disposition codes of sample case are:

- Family

- Personal

- Temporary

- Final

Temporary and Final Codes

Each call has an outcome, namely it can become an interview, or

a refusal, or an out of target or an appointment or a non contact

(busy, no answer, telephone answering machine):

Interview, refusal and out of target are final codes

Appointments and non-contacts are non-final codes and

they become final codes (worked-out call-counting meter

for too much appointments, for too much no answer, etc.)

1) An absent household is called again in different hours and days for 10

times, until somebody answer, but after 10 attempts without response,

the household is considered a non-contact and is substitute.

2) A busy line is a sign of presence; so the household number is re-call

immediately (after 5 five minutes) for at least 7 consecutively times.

After this, in case of non-contact, a non-answers code will be imputed at

this household that will be re-contacted in different hours and days. The

household will be considered worked out after 10 series of always busy.

3) In case of appointments, a good balance is to accept a maximum of 4

appointments on the family and other 5 on the selected respondent.

4) Between two appointment calls, it’s possible to have some non-

contact. In this case we have at disposition a maximum of 4 non-answers

and 4 series of busy line

Rules for Final Codes for CATI GBV

Survey

Different if the interview is already started

Sometimes, the eligible respondent selected to do the interview

presents some problems. He/she can refuse or can be seriously ill or is

impossible to find at home for more than 20 days …..

In this case the selected respondent will be substitute with another

eligible household's member, that will be, in his turn, randomly chosen

to do the interview.

Rules for Family Final Codes

The first selected individual presents a negative final code, while

a positive code is imputed to the household

The number of substitution may be equal to the number of eligible respondent in the household,

but it's a very rare event

.

In case of sample with substitution, inside the household

Rules can change

• According to the scheduling of the survey

• According to quality exigence and budget constraints

• According to performance indicators

• Also the call time and the bands in which days are divided

Synthetic outcome Analytic outcome

1 = Completed

2 = Stopped but valid

2 - Stopped 3 = Definitively stopped

4 = Refusal before the question about the introductory letter arrival

5 = Refusal after the question about the introductory letter arrival

6 = Refusal of selected person

7 = Refusal of respondent to involve selected person

8 = Not answer

9 = Busy

10 = Answering machine

11 = Fax/Data

12 = Appointment with family

13 = Appointment as selected is temporarily not present

14 = Appointment as selected is temporarily not available

15 = Appointment as selected has to temporarily stop the contact/ for

privacy issue

16 = Appointment fictitious

17 = Group of individuals

18 = second house

19 = office, shop, company,…

20 = disconnected phone number

21 = dead

22 = not eligible individuals in the family

23 = Severely sick

24 = Answering but the family is untraceable

25 = Maximum number of possible trials without contact

26 = Maximum number of possible family appointments

27 = Maximum number of possible selected individual appointments

8 - Maximum number of trials

7 - Other outcomes

1 - Completed

3 - No-response

4 - Provisional outcome without contact

6 - Out of target

5 - Appointment

For CAPI survey: to ask respondent if they prefer other places other than the house

In the Italian VAWS survey, for instance, that it is face to face for migrants, some interviewees asked to be interviewed outside 19,4%

(rooms of the municipality, libraries, bars, park, in the interviewers’ car or other public spaces)

Find the best time and location for the

interview

The skilled and well trained

interviewers

How they help to reduce refusals:

Interviewees’ questions

“What a person selected to do the survey ask to us?

The most common questions:

• Why my family? Why me?

• What is the survey about?

• Which is surevy usefuleness?

• What would you do with my data and personal data?

• Who carry out this survey?

• Why should I answer?

The best communication

style and channel between interviewer

and intervieweeFirst of all to help interviewer to distinguish his/her professional role from the person

And this is very important when some respondent categories are asked to do survey: “meeting/ phoning to those that….”

Those that «…I have the

laundry under the rain»

• To take an appointment is the best way

• To establish an agreement before to close the communication: ask the date and the time for the new appointment

• To understand if the illness is serious or not

Those that «…I feel sick»

Those that «…I am

against the survey»

Noo! I don’t want

other survey!!!

Those that «…I don’t

trust in the Institution»

• Too generic refuse! Ask for reason• Start to communicate is the best way to start a relationship• Tell that nothing will be sell• And then start to motivate about the purpose of the survey

If they are against of central government speak about the local government too!Surveys are made to plan meaningful policies

Those that « my time is

money…»

Those that «…the

interview is too long…»

Reinforce their importance as VIP person representing other of their kind

Never say the length of the survey!“It depends from your life and experience”Change the subject, saying that it is really interesting and easy to be answered; “we can start and if needed we can take an appointment to finish it

Those that «keep out of

my life!»

To motivate that he/she represents othersThere is not a curiosity but the need to know the realityImportance to plan policies.. Nothing of personal! ;)

Q Those that «I speak only in

dialect, I do not know anything,

I have not studied»

Those that «I am too

old…»Try to understand if it is a real obstacle or an excuseSay that it is easy and that her/his experience is really importantTo motivate and to reassure“we can’t loose what you think… your experience…”

Attention to item non response

Due to:

• problems of question wording, question design, response categories, question sensitiveness

• respondent resentment at being asked certain questions, respondent’s difficulty, respondent boredom, lack of time…

• Bad relationship between in interviewer-interviewee

• Coding or data entry errors

• Item nonresponse rates can be reported by type of violence, by type of investigated content, by kind population (sex, age, education, geographical area..) and interviewers

Need for more training