Characteristics of Willing and Reluctant Respondents

Every survey faces the problem of inducing its potential respondents to respond. While mail questionnaires may greatly decrease the costs of securing desired data, this cost advantage may be offset by low response rates or by known or unknown sources of bias through selective response. For certain purposes, a low response rate may not in itself be critical. If the researcher's only interest is in testing for the presence or absence of a relationship between specific variables, it may be sufficient o secure some valid and reliable data on each of the variables. As Kivlin (1965) has pointed out, for some purposes there may not be any inherent necessity for a random or representative sample. However, the lower the response rate, the greater the probability that either the presence or the absence of a specified relationship may be spurious. That is, it may be