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 (AAPOR) publishes standard definitions for calculating response rates. It also provides a downloadable spreadsheet for calculating response rates for phone surveys using the standard definitions.