Research Tips

Reporting Response Rates

When reporting the response rate for a survey or other type of research project it’s important to clarify exactly how it was calculated. Considerations such as how invalid (physical or e-mail) addresses are dealt with in mail and Web surveys and how answering machines are dealt with in phone surveys influences response rate calculations. The American Association for Public Opinion Research^Ext (AAPOR) publishes standard definitions^{Ext PDF} for calculating response rates. It also provides a downloadable spreadsheet^Ext for calculating response rates for phone surveys using the standard definitions.