Determining strategies to increase response rates in transport surveys of small shop-based businesses

Increasing representation of small business perspectives in policy research would benefit from identifying strategies to increase response rates. Despite the significance of the issue, there is inconsistent reporting amongst small business research about issues such as sampling, recruitment and surv...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Transportation planning and technology 2014-10, Vol.37 (7), p.598-622
Main Authors: Moutou, Claudine J., Greaves, Stephen P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accessibility
Automobile parking
Policies
Recruitment
Reporting
response rates
Sampling
shop-based business
Small business
Strategy
survey design
survey recruitment
Surveys
Transport
transport policy
web-assisted personal interviews
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Summary:Increasing representation of small business perspectives in policy research would benefit from identifying strategies to increase response rates. Despite the significance of the issue, there is inconsistent reporting amongst small business research about issues such as sampling, recruitment and survey design. Reporting on such issues may help address the under-representation of small business respondents and help reduce wasting research resources on less effective strategies. For policy matters that have the potential to disrupt how small business owners run their business, this is of particular importance. This paper reports on a survey of small businesses about changes to the transport accessibility features of a town centre that have the potential to affect the supply of car parking. Based on a review of the available literature, strategies were adopted to reduce respondent burden and maximise engagement. The paper presents an analysis of recruitment approaches in the first wave of the survey and demonstrates how the refinements to the recruitment approach were successful in achieving an increase in response rate from 40% to 47%.
ISSN:0308-1060
1029-0354
DOI:10.1080/03081060.2014.935568