Research Tips

Permission to Follow Up

When conducting self-administered surveys such as Web or mail surveys, it’s often useful to end with a question asking for permission to follow up with respondents if necessary. Follow-up questioning makes it possible to gain a clearer understanding of what a respondent intended to convey in his or her original answer if that was ambiguous, and it also opens up the possibility of exploring questions that emerge from analysis of the initial responses. For example, it’s sometimes useful to follow up with people whose responses make them either outliers or particularly representative of a group of respondents, or with those whose answers to open-ended questions suggest that they may be able to offer additional insights on the topic of interest. It would be possible to do follow-up questioning without asking permission if the respondent’s contact details are available, but because they originally only agreed to complete the survey, some respondents may feel exploited if they are contacted again without giving prior permission.