An Attempt to Reduce the Number of Calls on an Interview Inquiry

An experiment with an advance letter of an interview inquiry.

“…In our earlier study (Cartwright and Tucker, 1967), too, the letter seemed to have more impact on men than on women, but that time, when they were asked to reply and say when they were most likely to be in and able to be interviewed, it had an adverse effect. Some possible hypotheses to explain these differences are: (1) Men take more notice of written approaches than women.…”

“…In a postal inquiry about family planning, there was no difference in the response by men and women doctors (Cartwright, 1968). But in the present study we attempted to interview the general practitioners of the mothers and fathers in our sample and the success rate was 74% among the 644 men doctors and 87 % among the 55 women.…”

“…There was no difference in the response of mothers who were sent a letter and those who were not but the letter apparently halved the failure rate among the fathers, reducing it from 23 % to 12%. These differences are shown in Table I.In our earlier study (Cartwright and Tucker, 1967), too, the letter seemed to have more impact on men than on women, but that time, when they were asked to reply and say when they were most likely to be in and able to be interviewed, it had an adverse effect. Some possible hypotheses to explain these differences are: 241 copyright.…”

“…

In an earlier study (Cartwright and Tucker, 1967) we explored the possibility of reducing the number of calls on an interview inquiry by writing to people beforehand asking when they were most likely to be in. That experiment was unsuccessful: more people replied saying that they did not want to be interviewed than wrote telling us suitable times to call, and the final response rate in the experimental group who were sent letters was lower than in the control group who were not.

Advance letters which simply inform people about the study and do not ask for any reply may have a different effect.

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