For many, the very first encounter with a particular survey organisation happens upon reading a letter inviting them to take part in a survey – and first impressions matter the most. Therefore, good advance letter design is paramount in motivating people to cooperate and reducing survey nonresponse (Groves & Couper 1998, Dillman et al. 2014, etc.).

A large body of literature informs on their usefulness in mail surveys (e.g. Levine & Gordon 1958, Kephart & Bressler 1958, Ford 1967, Parsons & Medford 1972, Eisinger et al. 1974, Kanuk & Berenson 1975, Fox et al. 1988, Yammarino et al. 1991, Nicolaas et al. 2015, etc.), face-to-face surveys (e.g. Luppes 1995, Groves & Couper 1998, White et al. 1998, van den Brakel 2008, Wedemann & Farnall 2014, etc.), telephone surveys (e.g. Dillman et al. 1976, Traugott et al. 1987, Singer et al. 2000, Hembroff et al. 2005, Link & Mokdad 2005, De Leeuw et al. 2007, etc.), web surveys (e-mails and/or/vs. postal mails, e.g. Crawford et al. 2001, Goldstein & Jennings 2002, Bosnjak et al. 2007, Couper 2008, Millar & Dillman 2011, Bandilla et al. 2012, Kaplowitz et al. 2012, Luiten & de Groot 2014, Ipsos MORI 2018, Schouten et al. 2022, etc.), and mixed-mode surveys (e.g. Rao et al. 2010, Millar & Dillman 2011, Dillman et al. 2014, Dillman 2017, Dillman et al. 2017, Luiten 2019, Schouten et al. 2022, Wilson & Dickinson 2022, etc.), regarding not only cross-sectional, but also longitudinal and panel surveys (e.g. Bosnjak et al. 2007, van den Brakel 2008, Rao et al. 2010, Calderwood 2013, Lynn 2016, etc.).

Despite the large amount of knowledge thus accumulated, the field of advance letter design is still evolving, and dedicating a session to it with leading experts could not be more timely. The survey crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic hit NSOs and private organisations alike in an already decades-long decline of response propensity to surveys (Luiten et al. 2020). In these challenging times, conventional methods have to be revisited, as efficiency of past practices is decreasing (Dillman et al. 2014), which the pandemic proved, too. Furthermore, the post-pandemic survey landscape may well differ significantly from pre-COVID times (see e.g. Beck et al. 2022). Therefore, for resiliency in surveys, advance letters need also to be tailored to meet the new and old challenges better, which entails developing and testing new directions and novel practices.

The session will give insight not only into the practical aspects of cutting-edge survey advance letter design and development, but also the underlying theoretical assumptions, the applied methods as well as future avenues for improvement. Regional differences will also be addressed by the diverse selection of presenting experts, for a good design factors in social–cultural characteristics of the target population as well. This enables prudently adapting instead of simply adopting practices developed for and tested on other populations.

Beyond these, the session will provide:

- in-depth understanding of different techniques: the official/mandatory approach (e.g. Dillman et al. 1996, Hagedorn et al. 2014, Barth et al. 2016, Oliver et al. 2016), the application of behavioural science techniques (e.g. Wilson & Dickinson 2022);

- insights into short- and long-term effects of the various practices;

- overview of the development process from planning phase through testing to the end-product;

- recommendations for tailoring advance letters to challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic in a resilient and flexible advance communication framework;

- and so forth.

References:

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Chair: Mátyás Gerencsér

Speaker: Emma Dickinson

Speaker: Mr Jelmer C. de Groot

Speaker: Elizabeth Poehler

Speaker: Ferenc Mújdricza