Determining the Effects of Response Mode and Incentives on Survey Response Rates of School-based Agricultural Education Teachers: An Experimental Study

A decline in response rates was found for agricultural education research studies using survey research methods. The use of incentives and various response modes can affect survey response rates and were the focus of this experiment. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of survey response mode and incentives on response rates when surveying SBAE teachers. Findings revealed a significant increase in response rates for groups receiving an incentive. No significant differences were found between groups using different survey response modes. When examining summated scale scores for each construct in the questionnaire, participants answering on paper scored more positively in four of the six constructs compared to web responses. Recommendations for practice included using mixed response modes when financially feasible and oversampling to achieve the desired sample size to represent a population. Further research on the effects of communication mode on response rates is needed. An examination of why differences in scale scores occur with different response modes is recommended.