This study examines the response rates for surveys used in organizational
research. We analysed 1607 studies published in the years
2000 and 2005 in 17 refereed academic journals, and we identified
490 different studies that utilized surveys.We examined the response
rates in these studies, which covered more than 100,000 organizations
and 400,000 individual respondents. The average response rate
for studies that utilized data collected from individuals was 52.7
percent with a standard deviation of 20.4, while the average response
rate for studies that utilized data collected from organizations was
35.7 percent with a standard deviation of 18.8. Key insights from
further analysis include relative stability in response rates in the past
decade and higher response rates for journals published in the USA.
The use of incentives was not found to be related to response rates
and, for studies of organizations, the use of reminders was associated
with lower response rates. Also, electronic data collection efforts
(e.g. email, phone,web) resulted in response rates as high as or higher
than traditional mail methodology. We discuss a number of implications
and recommendations.