Survey Response Rate: What Is Good and How to Increase It

How to calculate the response rate

The basic formula is:

response rate = completed responses / eligible invited persons × 100

If you invite 600 students by email and 150 complete the questionnaire, your response rate is 25%. Distinguish it from the completion rate: the share of people who started the survey and finished it. If 210 people opened it and 150 finished, the completion rate is about 71%.

Professional survey research uses detailed standard definitions (for example from the American Association for Public Opinion Research) that distinguish complete and partial interviews, refusals and cases of unknown eligibility. For a dissertation, a clearly explained simple calculation is usually sufficient.

What is a good response rate?

There is no single benchmark. Response rates depend on the population, topic, mode, sender and incentives, and they have declined over recent decades. Cold online invitations to the general public often yield only single-digit or low double-digit percentages, while surveys of a closely connected group (employees, a small cohort, members of an organization that endorses the survey) can achieve much higher rates.

More important than the rate itself is the question of non-response bias: do the people who answered differ from those who did not in ways that matter for your research question? A 20% response rate with responders similar to the population can be more useful than a 50% rate with a strongly skewed group.

• Compare your sample with known population data (e.g. gender, year of study, program).
• Compare early and late responders; late responders are sometimes similar to non-responders.
• Discuss likely direction of bias: are students who are very stressed more or less likely to respond to a stress survey?

Twelve ways to increase your response rate

Survey methodologists such as Don Dillman have shown that response rates depend on reducing the costs of answering, increasing perceived benefits and building trust. In practice:

• Keep it short: 10 minutes or less if possible, and say how long it takes.
• Make it relevant: explain why the topic matters and why this person’s view counts.
• Personalize the invitation: address people by name where possible; personal emails outperform mass posts.
• Use a trusted sender: an invitation forwarded by a program director or student representative carries weight.
• Optimize for mobile: many respondents answer on their phones; avoid large grids.
• Send reminders: one or two reminders, a few days apart, often bring in a substantial share of responses.
• Time it well: avoid exam periods and holidays; mid-week mornings often work well for email.
• Offer an incentive if your ethics committee allows it: a small prize draw or a summary of results.
• Promise and keep confidentiality: explain anonymity clearly in the first lines.
• Use several channels: email, course platforms, QR codes on posters or slides, short announcements at the start of a lecture (with permission).
• Make the first question easy and interesting.
• Thank respondents and, if possible, share results afterwards.

What does not work well

Some tactics backfire or raise ethical problems:

• Repeatedly posting the link in the same group without new information
• Pressuring people you supervise or teach (raises voluntariness concerns)
• Making questions compulsory throughout, which increases dropouts and random answers
• Large incentives that may unduly influence participation
• Misleading subject lines or understating the time required

Planning invitations from your target sample

Work backwards from the sample size you need. Suppose your sample size calculation gives 385 usable responses, you expect 90% of completes to be usable and a response rate of 20%:

invitations = 385 ÷ 0.90 ÷ 0.20 ≈ 2,139

If you cannot reach that many people, adjust your expectations early: accept a larger margin of error, focus on a smaller population (and apply the finite population correction), or change your design.

Reporting response in your methods chapter

Be precise and transparent. Report:

• how many people were invited, through which channels and over what period
• how many started, completed and were excluded (with reasons)
• the response and completion rates, and how you calculated them
• if the number of invited people is unknown (e.g. link shared on social media), say so; then no response rate can be calculated
• a comparison of your sample with the population and a discussion of possible non-response bias

Tools and institutional requirements

At /umfragen you can share your survey via link and QR code, see starts and completions in real time, and estimate how many invitations you need with the sample size calculator. Incentives, reminders and recruitment channels often need ethics approval, and rules vary between institutions; your university’s own guidelines take precedence. Upload them to Professor Digital and the recruitment plan is tailored to them.