Using incentives to reduce unit nonresponse in surveys is an established practice, with prepaid incentives being particularly effective in increasing participation rates. In this paper, we investigate how incentives affect participation rates and sample composition in an offline-recruited mixed-mode survey (concurrent paper/web and push-to-web), using an experimental design. We conducted a survey on residential satisfaction and reasons for moving place, sampling residents who moved away from two urban neighborhoods in Cologne, Germany, between 2018 and 2022. Addresses were provided by Cologne’s Office for Urban Development and Statistics, including information on the residents’ age and gender. Of a random sample of …

The Healthy Chicago Survey (HCS) is a self-administered, multimode survey conducted annually on a random sample of Chicagoans aged 18 years or older. The survey uses an address-based sampling frame and offers both web and paper modes, with a Choice+ data collection protocol offering a higher promised incentive for completing by web. Overall, about 90% of individuals take the HCS via web. Sampled households are sent a series of mailings inviting the adult who is next to celebrate a birthday to complete the survey. In the 2023 HCS administration, an experiment was fielded in which half of the mailings contained …

Socioeconomic status (SES) plays a fundamental role in social science research and beyond, serving as an important indicator for understanding societal structures and social inequalities. Measuring SES involves diverse approaches, including objective and subjective measures, raising questions about their relationship and the factors influencing its size. This study investigates the correlation between objective and subjective socioeconomic status (OSS and SSS) and evaluates the effect of study context, study design, and operationalization of the measurement on this correlation. We conducted a meta-analysis, starting with a systematic literature search of relevant databases up to July 2021. Multilevel random effects models were employed …

The aims of public education often include preparing students to be actively engaged in the civic and political realms of society. However, research findings have consistently provided evidence of a gender gap in political knowledge, with men demonstrating significantly higher levels of political knowledge than women. Recently, scholars have begun questioning the validity of such findings due to the nature of the measures used to assess political knowledge. This study applies item response theory, specifically IRTree modeling, to evaluate the extent to which a reported gender gap in high school students’ political knowledge can be attributed to survey response styles. …