How do local political elites respond to a survey? Evidence from a large-scale councilors survey in Poland
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Date
2023
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Ohio State University Libraries in partnership with the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences
Abstract
Researchers use various techniques to increase the number of respondents and the representativeness of a survey sample. This is particularly challenging in the surveys targeting elites and narrow groups of professionals. In this paper, we investigate which subgroups of local elected representatives respond more eagerly to the CAWI survey. We also examine how the effort of collecting councilors’ e-mail addresses and sending them personal invitations may increase the likelihood of their participation in the survey. For this purpose, we analyze the original dataset from a large-scale survey of municipal councilors conducted in 2023 in Poland. The study targeted more than 3 thousand local councilors from 198 municipalities. We find that response rates do not differ substantially due to the basic individual characteristics of the councilors, but they are significantly higher in bigger municipalities. However, this correlation is fully mediated by the public availability of individual e-mail addresses. This variable is a highly relevant predictor of participation with average marginal effects of 12 p.p. on opening the survey and 11 p.p. on completing the questionnaire. Our findings have potential practical implications for designing sampling schemes in future local elite surveys. We emphasize the benefits of sending personal email invitations in CAWI surveys.
Description
Keywords
elite survey, response rate, CAWI, local elite, local councilors
Citation
Ask: Research and Methods. Volume 32, Issue 1 (2023), pp. 121-143