On the influence of a raffle upon responses to an urban transportation survey in New York City

Abstract

Objectives:

Determine whether raffling off prizes to increase participation in surveys triggers multiple responses from the same participants.

Methods:

All staff, instructors, and students of Queens College, New York, were invited to a 5 minute online survey about commuting in winter 2007. Entry in the raffle to win one of two iPODs was not conditional upon survey completion.

Results:

Participation was 18.7 %, and 3913 eligible responses. Of the 183 (4.7 %) participants with two answers, responses were consistent, with weighted kappas ranging between 0.48 and 1.00, and Pearson r’s between 0.81 and 1.0. Kappa’s were lower for opinion than for factual questions. The duplicate responses came from people with characteristics similar to the full sample. Commute modes included car (46 %), bus but no subway (28 %), and bus and subway (21 %). The median commute time was 90 minutes round-trip, and was greater than 120 minutes for 1/4 of the respondents.

Conclusion:

Participation was low despite the raffle. The small percentage of duplicate answers, maybe prompted by the reminding emails, had a negligible impact on the results.