The effects of a mid-data collection change in financial incentives on total survey error in the National Survey of Family Growth

Abstract

This chapter examines whether a change in incentives can lead to reductions of nonresponse bias, decreases in measurement error, and, through cost savings, decreases in sampling error. It first reviews the literature on incentives in face‐to‐face surveys, and then describes the survey, the administration of the incentive experiment, and the available data. The chapter also examines the impact of two different incentives on nonresponse error using several indirect measures, including response rates, composition of the interviewed groups, and differences in estimates of key statistics. It also reviews the relative costs of some treatments to see if the higher incentive can produce expected cost efficiencies, which can be translated into a larger number of interviews for a fixed budget. The chapter further explores the impact of incentives on consistency of reporting for questions administered by an interviewer using computer‐assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) and the same self‐administered using audio computer‐assisted self‐interviewing (ACASI).