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Is it helpful to include QR codes on mail contact materials for self-administered web surveys?
Lewis, T. H., Lee, N., Palmer, D. R., Freedner-Maguire, N., Matzke, H., & Prachand, N. (2025). Is it helpful to include QR codes on mail contact materials for self-administered web surveys?Survey Methods: Insights from the Field. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.13094/SMIF-2025-00001
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 a QR code enabling immediate survey launch for individuals with smartphones, while the other half of mailings did not include a QR code. This paper summarizes differences observed across the two experimental groups with respect to response rates, electronic device type used, sociodemographic distributions, and key health indicator distributions.
