Incentive Effect on Response Rates for the 1997 Canadian Survey of Household Spending

The Survey of Household Spending (SHS), which replaced the periodic Family Expenditure Survey (FAMEX) in 1997, is an annual survey that collects detailed expenditure information from households for a given calendar year. Due to the heavy response burden placed on respondents of this survey, it was decided for the 1997 survey to perform a test of incentive effect on response rates. Two incentives were used: a one-year subscription to the Statistics Canada publication Canadian Social Trends and a telephone calling card. The response rate data was analysed using Fisher's exact test and some non-parametric methods. After controlling for a discovered interviewer assignment effect, it was found that there was some evidence of a telephone card effect in the western and eastern most regions of Canada, while there was no evidence of any effect for the magazine. These findings were somewhat corroborated by a separate study testing effects of incentives on respondent relations. All these results will be discussed in this paper.